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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 

























































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Hppletons’ Ibomc IReaMng Boohs 

EDITED BY 

WILLIAM T. HARRIS, A. M., LL. D. 

UNITED STATES COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION 


DIVISION I 


Natural History 





APPLETONS’ HOME READING BOOKS 


NATURE-STUDY READERS 

% 

By JOHN W. TROEGER 


HAROLD’S QUESTS 


by 

JOHN W. TROEGER, A. M., B. S. 



NEW YORK 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

1899 







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,T ZH- 


42264 

Copyright, 1899, 

By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 


TWO COPIES RECEIVED. 

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’S'Unt) 



EDITOR’S PREFACE. 


This series of books is intended to supply 
wkat is called supplementary reading for pu¬ 
pils who have been two years or more at 
school. The first book will, indeed, be found 
useful even for pupils that are beginning their 
second year’s work at school. The sentences 
are short and the words are simple. The child 
in his third year may take home the first book, 
Harold’s Discoveries, read and re-read it at 
leisure. He will attain facility in recognizing 
in a printed form words that he already knows 
by sound. 

The first work of the child in the school is 
to learn to recognize the printed forms of 
words that are familiar to him by ear. These 
words constitute what is called the colloquial 
vocabulary. They are words that he has come 



VI 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


to know from having heard them used by the 
members of his family and by his playmates. 
He uses these words himself with considerable 
skill, but what he knows by ear he does not 
yet know by sight. It will require many 
weeks, many months even, of constant effort 
at reading the printed page to bring him to 
the point where the sight of the written word 
brings up as much to his mind as the sound 
of the spoken word. But patience and j)rac- 
tice will by and by make the printed word far 
more suggestive than the spoken word, as 
every scholar may testify. 

In order to hasten the growth of this famil¬ 
iarity with the printed word it has been found 
necessary to reinforce the reading in the school 
by supplementary reading at home. Books of 
the same grade of difficulty with the reader 
used in school are accordingly provided for the 
pupil. They must be so interesting to him 
that he will read them at home, using his time 
before and after school, and even his holidays, 
for the purpose. 

But this matter of familiarizing the child 


EDITOR’S PREFACE. yR 

with the printed word is only one half of the 
object aimed at by the supplementary home 
reading. He should read that which interests 
him. He should read that which will increase 
his power of making deeper studies. More¬ 
over, what he reads should correct his habits of 
observation. Step by step he should be initi¬ 
ated into the scientific method. Too many ele¬ 
mentary books fail to teach the scientific meth¬ 
od, because they do no more than point out in 
an unsystematic way those features of the ob¬ 
ject that the untutored senses of the pupil 
would discover at first glance. It is not useful 
to tell the child to observe a piece of chalk and 
see that it is white, more or less friable, and 
that it makes a mark on a fence or a wall. Sci¬ 
entific observation goes immediately behind the 
facts which lie obvious to a superficial investi¬ 
gation. Above all, it directs attention to such 
features of the object as exercise a determining 
or controlling influence on the environment. 
It directs attention to the features that have a 
causal influence in making the object what it 
is, and in extending its effects to other objects. 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


viii 

Science discovers the causal relations of objects 
and their reciprocal action on one another. 

After the child has learned how to observe 
what is essential in one class of objects he is 
in a measure fitted to observe for himself all 
objects that resemble this class. After he has 
learned how to observe the seeds of the milk- 
weed, he is partially prepared to observe the 
seeds of the dandelion, the burdock, and the 
thistle. After he has learned how to observe 
the oak, he has learned something of the 
method of observing the birch, the elm, and 
the pine. A study of the apple aids his power 
of observing the cranberry and the cherry. 
A study of the budding of the willow enables 
him to understand the budding of the lilac, 
and a study of the germination of beans to un¬ 
derstand that of peas and lentils. 

The teacher is liable to err in undertaking 
to carry the investigation of one province of 
Nature too far, at the expense of neglecting a 
similar investigation in other kingdoms of Na¬ 
ture. The books of this series discuss various 
subjects in botany and in animal life; not 


EDITOR’S PREFACE. 


IX 


only these, but they start investigations in 
physics. The course is a spiral one, as it ought 
to be in the elementary school. Even in his 
first year the child ought to learn something 
regarding the methods of observation in each 
of the three great realms of Nature—first, the 
realm of elements treated of in the science 
of physics or natural philosophy; second, the 
realm of botany, treating of the various forms 
of the plant; and, third, the realm of animal 
life. Each of these realms of Nature is to be 
taken up again in the second book, and still 
again in later books of the series. With the 
growing power of the child to think and use 
scientific method he will expect and demand 
new scientific vistas. These will be furnished 
one by one in more advanced books. 

The teacher of a school will know how to 
obtain a small sum of money to invest in sup¬ 
plementary reading. In a well-graded school 
of four hundred pupils ten books of each 
number are sufficient, these ten books to be 
loaned the first week to the best pupils in one 
of the rooms, the next week to a second ten 


X 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


pupils. On Monday afternoon a discussion 
should be held over the topics of interest to the 
pupils who have read the book the week be¬ 
fore. The pupils who have not yet read the 
book will become interested and await with 
eagerness their turn for the loan of the desired 
volume. Another ten books of a higher grade 
may be used in the same way in a room con¬ 
taining more advanced pupils. The advantage 
of this supplementary reading device is not 
limited to the fact that the pupils of the school 
read the books at home and reinforce the prog¬ 
ress which they make at school by reading in 
the regular readers. It is another advantage 
of great importance that the older pupils who 
have left school, and even the parents avail 
themselves of the opportunity and read the 
book thus brought into the house. Thus 
begins the continuous education that lasts 
through life, namely, the education by means 
of the public library. 

William T. Harris. 


W ashington, D. C., April 4, 1898. 


PREFACE. 


It has been my aim in this book to present 
reading matter that shall be worth the child’s 
time to read, and to put it in such a form that 
it may engage his mind and induce him to 
“ forage beyond the book.” 

The subject-matter is taken from the com¬ 
mon things in nature which children are most 
likely to meet and find interesting. Animals 
and plants, their development and their habits, 
always interest, but the child needs hints and 
questions to direct him in his seeing and 
thinking. He needs clews more than facts, 
wisdom rather than knowledge. 

Children never tire of rambles in the forest 
or boat rides on the river ; and, if directed 
and aided in their observations, as most of 
them must be, they will find a field for 

xi 



Xll 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


thought that is not only truly refreshing but 
highly educative. The section on physics is 
added for the winter hours because of its 
importance and interest to the children. On 
every hand they come in contact with these 
phenomena. If they make a beginning in 
seeking answers to questions about the life 
and forces that surround them, they will be ac¬ 
quiring a habit that will make thinking men 
and women of them. Space permits only the 
most elementary facts, but it is hoped enough 
is given to open the mind in this direction— 
a new field for discovery to the beginner. 

It is admitted that nature study is not sci¬ 
ence, but it should be the first step in the 
study of science and the best kind of training 
for it. The subjects herein treated are brought 
into connected relation, and the first steps of 
classification suggested. Scientific terms have 
been sparingly introduced, and then only after 
their use and meaning have been understood. 

The plan adopted in the preceding vol¬ 
umes has been continued—that is, the state¬ 
ments are generally in the first person ; the 


PREFACE. 


xiii 

subjects previously taken up are here further 
expanded and new ones added; the imagina¬ 
tion is to be stimulated by the contemplation 
of facts and forces, not by fanciful nature 
myths and sentimental personifications. The 
facts and phenomena of nature have interest 
enough for the child. If he is taught the un¬ 
real and imaginary he will find it a difficult 
task to confine himself to facts—an altogether 
too prevalent habit. “ Train up a child in the 
way he should go, and even when he is old he 
will not depart from it.” 

John W. Troeger.- 

La Grange, Illinois, August , 1899. 







. 





• • 

* 






















CON T E N T S. 


PAGE 

The Gladness of Nature.1 

The grasshopper.2 

The cricket.7 

The cockroach and walking stick.9 

The katydid.11 

The firefly.12 

The bee.14 

The bumblebee.23 

The Forest.27 

The oaks.29 

Linden trees . 33 

The elms.36 

The poplars.40 

Walnut and butternut.43 

The hickory tree.46 

The hazelnut.49 

The height of trees.51 

The age of trees.53 

Animal Life in the Forest.58 

The chipmunk.59 

The flying squirrel.62 

The hermit among animals.66 

Rabbtts.73 

The quail.74 

Leer .»••••••••• 76 

The wolf.85 

Snakes #«*#•• • • • • • 87 


xv 










XVI 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


PAGE 

Some Things about Soil.90 

Sand and plant matter.91 

Water, plant, and mineral matter . . . .93 

Clay, loam, and sandy soil.94 

Capillary attraction.97 

How soil is made.99 

Erosion.102 

Air in Everything.105 

Air has weight.108 

The atmosphere.114 

Matter.110 

Sound.117 

Velocity of sound.121 

Quality and pitch.122 

Vibration of strings !.123 

The ear.129 

Heat.134 

Conduction.135 

Convection.138 

Expansion.142 

Thermometer.148 

Heat required to change form.150 

Sources of heat.151 

What is heat? .152 

Light.153 

Light moves in straight lines.155 

Light is reflected.155 

Light is refracted.160 

Umbra and penumbra.169 

Intensity of light.171 

Inverted image . ..173 

The eye.174 

Magnetism.183 

Electricity.187 

Frictional electricity.191 

Galvanic electricity.196 










HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


THE GLADNESS OF NATURE. 

Is this a time to be cloudy and sad, 

When our mother Nature laughs around ; 

When even the deep-blue heavens look glad, 

And gladness breathes from the blossoming ground ? 

There are notes of joy from the hang-bird and wren, 
And the gossip of swallows through all the sky; 
The ground squirrel gayly chirps by his den, 

And the wilding bee hums merrily by. 

The clouds are at play in the azure space, 

And their shadows at play on the bright-green vale, 
And here they stretch to the frolic chase, 

And there they roll on the easy gale. 

There’s a dance of leaves in that aspen bower, 

There’s a titter of winds in that beeclien tree, 
There’s a smile on the fruit and a smile on the flower, 

And a laugh from the brook that runs to the sea. 

2 1 



2 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


And look at the broad-faced sun, how he smiles 
On the dewy earth that smiles in his ray, 

On the leaping waters and gay young isles! 

Ay, look, and he’ll smile thy gloom away. 

Bryant. 


THE GRASSHOPPER. 



Meadow grass- ^ 
hopper. 


“ See this large hay horse! ” said a man to me in 
German one day, as I approached him in the fields. 

He had a large grasshop¬ 
per in his hand. 

I told him it was a 
grasshopper, and asked 
him why he called it a hay 
horse. 

He replied: “We call 
him grasshopper too, some¬ 
times, but more often, hay horse. He looks like a 
horse pulling a heavy load, and he can always be found 
in hayfields.” 

I had to admit that I 
could see some resemblance 
to a horse, as he had said. 

As you will see in the 
pictures, there are two kinds 
of grasshoppers. One kind has short, straight an- 
tennse, and the other has long, curved ones. There 



Red-legged locust. 


THE GRASSHOPPER. 


3 


is also some difference in their wings and legs and the 
shape of their abdomen. 

Those that have long antennae are called grass¬ 
hoppers, and the others are usually called locusts, 
but there is much confusion about the names. 
Some even call the cicada a locust. 

I have seen large green grasshoppers in the 
fields. They look so much like the grass that it’s 



Cone-headed grasshopper. 


hard to find them. There are others that are as gray 
as the dusty road, where they like to sun themselves. 
When open their wings show black bars and dull- 
red spots. 

Can you think of any reason why the grasshopper 
that lives in the grass is green and the one that lives 



4 


HAROLD'S QUESTS. 


in the road is gray ? Do you think the green grass¬ 
hopper is green because he lives in the grass, or does 
he live in the grass because he is green ? Do you 
think the gray grasshopper feels safer from his ene¬ 
mies when he sits in the dusty road than when he sits 
in the grass ? Do you remember how much the 
meadow lark looks like the dry grass in which her 
nest is ? Perhaps you have seen snakes which are 
green marked with black, so that they look like the 
grass with shadows crossing it. If we have sharp 
eyes we may see many other creatures which seem to 
take on the color of their surroundings. What do 
you think is the cause of this ? 

All grasshoppers have the body in three parts: a 
clumsy head, a thick thorax, and an abdomen which 
is closely joined to the thorax. The head has two 
antennae, large eyes and jaws. To the thorax are 
attached the six legs. The hind pair is long and 
strong. Can you tell why ? 

How quickly he jumps ! and he needs to. He has 
many enemies, such as birds and small insect-eating 
animals. If the bobolink’s sharp eyes should spy him 
in the grass he would scarcely be able to get away, 
even with his long legs. 

If a man had as much strength in his legs in pro¬ 
portion to his size as has the grasshopper, he could 
easily jump over the highest building. 


THE GRASSHOPPER. 


5 


A grasshopper’s eyes are worth noticing. I find 
two kinds in his head: a pair of large ones, and 
smaller ones besides. 

The large ones are made of many little eyes, as 
you can see with a magnifying glass. The small 
ones seem to be single. By looking sharply I found 
three of these. Where do you 
suppose the third one is ? I think 
I will let you find it. I’m sure 
you’ll be surprised when you do. 

I’ve often taken the grasshop- Part ot compound 
per in my hand, and then he spits eye. 

out a dark-brown fluid, which the children call tobacco 
juice. Has he the bad habit of chewing tobacco? 
Ho, no, for I believe he never goes near tobacco. 

Why does he give out this juice ? Is it a means 
of defense ? It does not have a bad odor. I wonder 
if it is poisonous to some of his enemies. 

Some of the grasshopper’s enemies are fond of 
her eggs and destroy thousands of them every year. 
For this reason she does everything she can to protect 
the eggs. 

When she wishes to lay them she digs a hole in 
the ground with her egg-layer and puts the eggs in 
it. She drops a sticky fluid over them, which hard¬ 
ens, and forms a case to protect them. When this is 
done she covers up the hole carefully. That is all 




6 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


she can do for her young. When cold weather comes 
she dies; but the eggs are quite safe in the ground ; 
the warm spring sun hatches them, and the young 
come out of the ground like their mother, except 
that they are very much smaller, and have only scales 
for wings. 

They feed upon green vegetation and grow very 
fast. Soon they become too large for their skin, 
which bursts along the back. They work themselves 


out of it, and a 
new one underneath 
is ready for them. 
In this way they 
get six different 
coats while they are 
growing. 



Short-winged locust. 


Locusts some¬ 


times become very numerous, especially in sandy 
regions. Great swarms of them migrate in search 
of food, and devour everything green in their way. 
A traveler in India says that he once saw a cloud of 
these locusts passing overhead so dense as to darken 
the sun. He estimated the cloud to be about five 
hundred miles in length. 

Sometimes these migrating swarms are driven out 
to sea by the wind, and becoming exhausted they fall 
into the water and drown. The dead bodies are 


THE CRICKET. ? 

washed up on the shore in great banks, in some cases 
fifty miles in length and three or four feet high. 

In order to study insects I made a wire-screen 
cage. In the bottom I put a few inches of sand, into 
which I set pots containing grasses 
and other plants for the insects to 
feed on. I was able to find out 
many interesting things about these 
insects by means of an opera-glass. 

In this way I discovered that Mr. 

Grasshopper is a fiddler. I saw him 
use his hind legs as a bow and his 
wings as a violin. I noticed that 
some grasshoppers did this one way 
and others in a different way. Some 
played one tune and some another. 

Like beginners in music, they could 
play but few tunes. Mrs. Grasshopper neither sings 
nor plays. She seems to be satisfied to listen to her 
husband’s performances, which he keeps up pretty 
steadily. 



Wing of grasshop¬ 
per, showing 
the veins run¬ 
ning diagonal¬ 
ly across, that 
serve the in¬ 
sect for fiddle 
strings. 


THE CRICKET. 

In my cage were several black insects. They are 
called crickets. The name probably comes from the 
chirping sound that they make. 

This insect has a chubby body. Like the grass- 


HAROLD'S QUESTS. 


hopper, he has long antennae, long hind legs, and 
straight wings which lie along the back. The male 
cricket has two long bristles or styles at the end of 
his short abdomen, and the female has a still longer 
egg-layer, or ovipositor, as it is called. She makes a 
hole in the ground with this, in which to hide her 
eggs away from enemies. She sometimes lays as 
many as three hundred in a packet. 

Like Father Grasshopper, Mr. 
Cricket plays his violin for hours, 
and Mrs. Cricket never seems to 
get tired of his music. 

He doesn’t seem to 
have a larder, and why 
should he ? He finds 
plenty to eat as he 
goes along. If he 
doesn’t have enough juicy 
green leaves and stalks, he doesn’t mind making a 
meal or two from your leather shoe or trousers, or 
even from the handles of your old tools. 

When cold weather comes he likes to get into our 
houses, somewhere near the fireplace, and ’tis well 
for him too. Jack Frost would freeze the life out 
of him if he remained out of doors. 

There are many queer ideas about the cricket in 
different parts of the world. Some people think if 



' Wv^l 
VV 

Brown cricket and tiny 
spotted cricket. 


THE COCKROACH AND WALKING STICK. 


9 


one gets into the house and chirps his little song, that 
some friend or near relative will soon die. Others 
think it is a sign of good luck to hear the cricket on 
the hearth. 


THE COCKROACH AND WALKING STICK. 


The order Or-thop-ter-a also 
includes cockroaches and walking 
sticks. 

The former are rather broad 
and flat, and their front pair of 
wings are smooth and leathery. 
This makes them look much like 
beetles. 

They hide in cracks during 
the day, and come 
forth in the dark 
to feed upon almost 
everything in their 
way. They give 
out a disagreeable 
odor, which they 
leave upon every¬ 
thing they touch. 
They abound 
Cockroaches. in warm countries, 









10 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


where they are great pests. One kind, called the 
drummer, found in Cuba and other islands, is about 

two inches long, and 
makes a drumming 
sound on wood which 
is very annoying. 

The walking stick 
is one of the queer 
things of Nature. It 
has a very slender 
body, six legs, and usu¬ 
ally no wings. Once 
in a while one is found 
with wings which are 
shorter than its body. 

It is quite probable 
that many centuries 
ago all of this family 
of insects had wings, 
but as their manner 
of life changed their wings became useless and 
gradually grew smaller, until they have almost disap¬ 
peared. 

Walking sticks are found upon plants, and look 
so much like the objects on which they live that it 
is difficult to find them. 



Walking stick. 




THE KATYDID. 


11 


THE KATYDID. 

Did you ever hear an insect say “ Katydid, katy¬ 
did, she did ? ” It is called katydid, and I am sure 
you can guess why. 

This insect looks much like a green grasshopper, 
and on account of its straight wings it belongs to the 
same order of insects. The cricket and earwig also 
belong to this order. 

The name of this order is Orthoptera (ortho, 
straight, and ptera, wings), straight wings. 

The katydid never seems to be in a hurry. He 
says his three syllables slowly, and waits a minute or 
so before he repeats them, quite 
in contrast in this respect with 
some of his cousins, who nerv¬ 
ously and continuously saw away. 

The male katydid has a sort 
of a drum on the back between 
the wings, which you can easily 
see. He rubs his wings against 
the drum to make the noise which 
sounds to us like “ Katydid, katy¬ 
did, she did.” 

There is an interesting story about the katydid’s 
name. Two sisters, Katy and Dora, loved the same 
young man, whose name was Oscar. When Katy 



12 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


found out that he loved Dora she began to hate him, 
and gave way to this hatred until she secretly mur¬ 
dered him. In those days there were no detectives 
to hunt down murderers. But Jupiter knew what 
Katy had done, and wished to punish her. So he 
changed Oscar’s spirit into a new kind of insect, 
which lived in the trees. One day, while Oscar’s 
friends were walking about under the trees and ask¬ 
ing each other who might have killed Oscar, they 
heard the words “ Katydid, Katydid, she did.” It 
was the new insect, and so Katy, the murderer, was 
found out. “ Be sure your sin will find you out ” 
has often come true. 

THE FIREFLY. 

Man has invented a lantern to give him light in 
the dark. Did you ever see an insect that furnishes 
its own light ? There are not only insects, but 
many other small animals in the warm seas that 
have the power of giving out light. The light 
bearers best known to us are the firefly and the glow¬ 
worm. 

The firefly is the lamp carrier among bugs. He 
has the power to give out light from the hind 
part of his body whenever he wishes. What that 
light is, and how he produces it, I do not know. 



I 





14 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


The firefly is a slender beetle a little more than 
half an inch long. His hard wing-covers form a 
sheath under which the true wings are folded. 
For this reason he belongs to the order of insects 
called Co-le-op-ter-a. Coleoptera means sheath- 
wings. This order includes all beetles. 

The larvae of the firefly look like worms. 
They live on plants and insects, some of them on 
snails. 

The Mexican Indians sometimes tie a number 
of fireflies to their hands, and they serve very well 
as a lantern. One traveler tells us that he put 
some of them into a bottle, and they produced 
light enough to read by. In Dutch Guiana and 
other parts of South America little wicker cages 
filled with fireflies are used as lanterns. 

In warm countries there are many fireflies, and 
most of them are larger than ours. One kind in 
South America is an inch and a half long. 


THE -BEE. 

What a busy little creature the bee is! You 
never see her idle or flying hither and thither just to 
kill time. She seems to have a purpose in everything 
she does. 


THE BEE. 


15 


I have not seen the bees on many of the early 
spring flowers, but they are eager for the tree blos¬ 
soms, especially those of the maple and linden. After 
these the raspberry flowers supply them with nectar, 
and as soon as the white clover puts forth its blos¬ 
soms the bees are in them. The red clover hides its 
nectar in tubes too long for the bees to reach. The 



Honeybees: No. 1, worker; No. 2, drone; 

No. 3, queen; No. 4, portion of honey¬ 
comb, showing cells of workers and 
royal cell. 

bumblebee gets that. Then the 
bees visit sweet clover and the 
corn blossoms. In the fall a field 
of buckwheat affords them special 
delight. The nectar from its blossoms makes rather 
dark honey. 

Here the bee is a friend to both the buckwheat 
and the farmer, for, while she is gathering the nectar 
with which to make honey, she is helping the blossoms 
to ripen the seed from which the miller makes flour, 



16 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


and both buckwheat cakes and honey meet again on 
our breakfast table in winter. 

After bees have once found a field or a tree full 
of blossoms they can go straight to it. They never 
lose their way. I wonder how they know it. Do 
they remember the way, or the objects which they 
pass, or the direction ? 

Sometimes in spring they are chilled by the cold, 
and fall down in sight of the hive, unable even to 
crawl into it. When a storm comes up they fly 
home in great haste, and if they are overtaken by 
it they hide under the leaves or in the grass, but 
nevertheless many perish. In this and other ways 
hundreds of the inmates of the hive are lost every 
year. 

Did you ever see the bee go from flower to flower 
until her hind legs were thick and yellow with the 
pollen which she gathers and takes home to her hive ? 

It is fun to watch her unload the pollen. She 
scoops it out of the groove in her thighs with the 
spine that projects from the second leg, and with the 
front pair of feet puts it. in her mouth. Then she 
stows it away in a cell. 

The bees are sure to find the first blossoming cat¬ 
kin on the willow tree and gather its pollen, from 
which to make fresh bee pap. The old supply in 
the fall has probably given out or lost its fresh 



Interior of a beehive, showing the comb cells partly filled with 
honey and partly empty. Worker bee, queen, drone. Hind 
leg of bee loaded with pollen. 

3 























18 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


flavor. It does not seem to keep as well as the 
honey. 

How does the bee gather the honey ? She sips the 
sweet nectar from the flowers and puts it away in the 
antechamber of her stomach, a sort of crop. 

When the bee gets home she presses the flower 
honey out of her crop into the six-sided cells of the 
comb which some of the other bees have made ready. 
As the honey passes over the tongue, it is mixed with 
a very little formic acid, which comes from a gland 
through a tiny slit near the root of tongue. The acid 
seems to cure the honey and it will then keep many 
years. 

The honeycomb is made of wax. You may think 
that the making of the comb amounts to very little 
compared with the making of the honey, but the bee 
surely can not think so. Those who have watched 
the making of the comb say that it takes more time 
and patience than it does to fill the cells with the 
honey. 

The waxmakers first fill themselves with honey 
and retire to a quiet place in the hive, where they wait 
several days, until small drops come out through the 
body between the rings of the abdomen and dry into 
tiny wax scales. These the bees take off, and with 
them build up the cells of the comb. 

How delicate these cells are ! Their walls are no 


THE BEE. 


19 


thicker than a sheet of note paper. How regular! 
One seems to be just like the other. I wonder if 
they are all exactly the same size. Some day I mean 
to measure them with compasses. 

I have said “ she” in speaking of the bee, and that 
is correct, because the working bees are dwarfed 
females. There are males in every hive too, but 
they do not work. They are lazy, clumsy, broad- 
shouldered fellows, always humming, but doing noth¬ 
ing useful. That is why they are called drones. 
When the weather is fine they sometimes fly out in 
the fresh air, not to gather honey, but simply to 
enjoy themselves. They live to eat, and, like most 
people who spend their lives in that way, are not 
long wanted. 

The workers get rid of them about August, and 
the drones seem to know when their end is near; 
for, instead of buzzing about everywhere, they hide 
away in fear in the hive making a pitiful noise. 
Sooner or later the workers starve them, or pull them 
to pieces, and drag them out of the hive. The drones 
do not defend themselves; it would be useless to 
attempt it. I have seen as many as three workers 
attack a single drone. One took hold of the head, 
another of the hind leg, and the third stung him to 
death in the thorax. 

The queen is longer than either the drone or the 


20 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


worker, and is somewhat different in shape. She 
looks very queenly, and you would know her at first 
sight. 

She is the only mother bee in the hive, and goes 
from cell to cell laying an egg in each one. Although 
she lays about one hundred and twenty eggs an hour, 
it takes several weeks to supply all the cells of a 
large hive. 

In three days little larvae, which look like small, 
white worms, come out of the eggs. They are well 
cared for by the nurses, and in five or six days have 
grown to their full size and stop eating. The work¬ 
ers then seal over the little cells, leaving many small 
air holes in each. The larvae spin silken cocoons and 
begin their sleep of ten or eleven days. At the end 
of that time they work their way out of the cells. 
They are now perfect bees of a light-gray color. 
Then the nurses bring them food and pull off the thin 
gossamer web that covers them, leaving them as neat 
and clean as a new pin. The young bees remain in 
the hive a week or two, doing hive work, such as 
nursing and cleaning, before they begin to gather 
honey. 

The workers seem to have it in their power to 
raise queens whenever they need them. They take 
an ordinary larva and enlarge the cell in which it 
lives. They also feed it plentifully with a honey 


THE BEE. 


21 


preparation, that has been called “ royal jelly,” or 
bee pap, made by the bees themselves. 

There is not room enough in any hive for two 
queens. The workers seem to be very careful to 
prevent a contest between queens, but this can not 
always be avoided if two queens happen to be in the 
hive at the same time. The rivals are sure to attack 
each other and fight to a finish. In such a case the 
workers gather round and seem to take as much inter¬ 
est in the contest as do people in a prize fight. But 
I am sure they are not in the habit of betting on the 
winner. 

The bees sometimes keep the young queen a pris¬ 
oner in her cell until, for lack of room, a part of the 
hive has taken the old queen and gone out in search 
of a new house. This is called swarming. 

When they swarm they pour out of the hive in a 
great hurry and whirl about each other, with the 
queen in the center of the swarm, all the while mak¬ 
ing a soft, humming noise. Soon the whirling mass 
moves off, at first slowly, over fences and fields. 
Sometimes they settle on a branch to rest, and pos¬ 
sibly to send out a few workers house-hunting. They 
prefer a hollow tree for their home. In this respect 
they are still wild bees, and no matter how long they 
have been in hives, when they swarm they still want 
to go to the woods. 



22 HAROLD'S QUESTS. 

There is great fun in following a swarm of bees. 
Usually they go on in the direction in which they 


Bees swarming. 

start, unless high objects, make them turn aside. 
They have sometimes been made to alight by throw¬ 
ing water on them. 


THE BUMBLEBEE. 


23 


Every hive is a little republic managed by the 
workers. It is incorrect to say that the queen rules 
as she pleases, for she must obey the workers even in 
the matter of swarming. She is truly not born a 
queen, but made one. When room in the hive 
becomes scarce, the workers find a new home, and 
a part of the colony take the old queen and set out to 
occupy it. She is more a mother than a queen, and 
all the bees are her children. They always wait upon 
her carefully, for without a queen the colony would 
soon die out. The queen is the egg-layer, and when 
there is no queen there are no eggs from which to 
raise young bees. Workers have been known to steal 
eggs from other hives, from which to raise a queen; 
or even to feed some of their own number with 
special food in order that they might lay eggs. Such 
eggs, however, hatch only drones. The life of the 
colony therefore depends upon the presence of the 
queen. 

THE BUMBLEBEE. 

The bumblebee is also called the bumblebee, and 
by the Germans “ Hummel.” She probably gets her 
name from the sound she makes while flying about. 

Let your eye follow her as, dressed in black and 
yellow, she zigzags through the hot, sunny air. 
Watch her as she dips clumsily into the blossoms and 


24 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


drowsily hums from flower to flower. Bumblebees 
make us think of lazy summer days, but they are 
neither lazy nor useless. 

The colony of bumblebees consists of queens, 
males, and workers. Both queens and workers are 
armed with terrible stings. 

The queens of the bumblebees are not so jealous 
of each other as are the queens of the hive, for a 
number of them will live peaceably together in the 
same nest. One large nest was found to contain one 
hundred and seven males, fifty-seven queens, and one 
hundred and eighty workers. 

The males and workers die during the winter. 
The queens alone survive because they hibernate. 
As soon as the warm spring weather comes each 
queen goes forth to found a colony of her own. 

She usually builds her nest in the ground, select¬ 
ing a bank or some other dry place, often the old 
nest of a field mouse. She makes a waxy comb of a 
few large, brownish cells, in which she lays her eggs. 
She adds cell by cell as she increases the colony. 
There is usually very little .honey to be found in her 
nest. 

When the bumblebees’ nest is disturbed they be¬ 
come very angry, and fiercely attack the intruder. 
One day, while ploughing in the field, I disturbed a 
bumblebee nest. The angry inmates at once rushed 


THE BUMBLEBEE. 


25 



The nest of the bumblebee. 


out and attacked both me and my horses with such 
vigor that they put us to flight. I put on an over¬ 
coat and buttoned it tightly up to my chin, a veil 







26 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


over my face and neck, and mittens on my hands, 
and went out again to their nest with a good deal of 
confidence. As soon as I approached, some of them 
gave the signal and the whole colony came buzzing 
out again to renew the attack. There was a little 
hole in the top of my hat which I had forgotten, 
and some of them crept in there and stung the 
top of my head. Others crept up under my coat, 
and once again I was put to flight. But I was not 
going to be defeated so easily. That evening, when 
they were all quietly sleeping, I took an armful of 
straw, laid it on their nest, and smoked them out. 

The bumblebee makes itself very useful to many 
flowers, especially the red clover, by carrying the 
pollen from one blossom to another. This mixing of 
pollen is necessary to make good, ripe seed. 

It is impossible to raise red clover seed in 
Australia because there are no bumblebees there. 
At two different times colonies of bumblebees 
were taken there, but for some reason they soon 
died out. 

Mr. Darwin, who was a great observer, learned 
that in a certain field there was much clover some 
years and other years very little. He wondered 
why; he then began to look for the cause, and dis¬ 
covered that the clover crop depended on the num¬ 
ber of bumblebees. He found that field mice de- 


THE FOREST. 


27 


stroyed the bumblebees’ nests; that when there were 
many mice there were few bumblebees; and that 
when the people in the village near by had many 
cats, which destroyed the field mice, there were few 
mice to destroy the bumblebees’ nests. The con¬ 
clusion was evident: many cats, few mice; few 
mice, many bumblebees ; and many bumblebees, much 
clover. 


THE FOREST. 

My way to school lay through a small forest. 
Tall trees stood on either side of the path. The 
more I learned about the trees the more secrets they 
seemed to have for me. I saw them in the winter 
when their branches were leafless. I saw them in 
the spring as soon as the buds began to swell. I 
watched their tiny blossoms as they covered them¬ 
selves with yellow pollen and then changed into the 
winged seeds, which later were scattered across my 
pathway. I saw the leaves unfold and cover the 
trees with green, and then change to yellow and 
brown, red and scarlet, setting the forest on fire. 
Every tree became an object of interest to me, 
and I learned the names of all the varieties in that 
forest, and, what is better, their manner of life and 
growth. 


28 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


“ ’Twas a pleasant toil to trace and beat, 

Among the glowing trees, this winding way, 
While the sweet autumn sunshine, doubly sweet, 
Flushed with the ruddy foliage, round us lay, 
As if some gorgeous cloud of morning stood, 

In glory, ’mid the arches of the wood. 


“ A path ! what beauty does a path bestow 



Even on the 
dreariest wild ! Its 
savage nooks 
Seem homelike where ac¬ 
customed footsteps go, 
And the grim 
rock puts on familiar 
looks.” 


Bryant. 





THE OAKS. 


THE OAKS. 


The oaks always spoke 
to me of strength and dig¬ 
nity. There were the white 
oak, the red, the bur or moss- 
cup, and the black or yellow- 
barked oak. 

The leaves of these oaks are 
all deeply lobed and very much 
alike. Yet if we examine them 
carefully we shall lind differences. 

I could distinguish the various 
kinds of oaks best by their bark. 
The white oak has a gray, rather 
thin, scaly bark, which in old trees 
peels off in short strips. The bark 
of the bur oak is thicker and 
rougher, and does not scale off as 
does that of the white oak 
red oak has dark bark 
with deep cracks 
in it. This va¬ 
riety gets its 

J _ SCARLET 

name from the oak 

reddish tinge of its wood. 



SPANISH 





30 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


The bark of the black oak is very much like that of 
the red oak, but it is a little darker and rougher, 
and the inside is an orange yellow. For this reason 
it is also called the yellow-barked oak. 

Now I want to tell you about the blossoms that 
I found on the oaks and other trees in this forest. 
Perhaps you have said to yourself, these trees do not 
have blossoms. 

I thought so too at one time, but when I began 
to observe the trees all the year round, I found 
out some very interesting things about their blos¬ 
soms. 

Everybody has seen the blossoms on apple trees, 
and on plum, pear, and cherry trees, and knows how 
beautiful and fragrant they are. These are all sim¬ 
ple roses, and some of them are quite as sweet as 
any double rose. The wild crab blossom is consid¬ 
ered the most delightfully fragrant blossom of the 
rose family. 

But how about the blossoms on the oak, elm, and 
pine ? I grant they are not as showy, but they are 
quite as wonderful and interesting as any fruit-tree 
blossoms. 

I began early in the spring to watch the blossoms. 
I saw the blossoms of the Western cotton tree first. 
They come long before the leaves. In fact, the 
blossoms on most trees appear before the leaves. 



Double roses 



32 


HAROLD'S QUESTS. 


Next I saw the maple blossoms. The ash and oak 
blossoms were among the latest to appear. 

Like the blossoms of many other forest trees, 



Red oak. 


those of the oak are not perfect, because they have 
neither calyx nor corolla. Even the stamens and 
pistils do not grow in the same flower. The sta- 







LINDEN TREES. 


33 


mens are in the form of catkins. The pistils are 
small, stunted-looking things, but they are the part 
of the flower which bears the acorns. 

The red and the black oak require 



LINDEN TKEES. 

Another tree was sure to attract attention. It 
was of good size, and had very large, almost 
circular leaves with saw-tooth edges. I found 
some leaves that measured six inches in width. One 

kind had smaller leaves, only three inches across. 
4 




Basswood, American linden. 






THE ELMS. 


35 


The large leaves made such a dense shade that not 
even weeds would grow beneath them. 



These trees have the well-sounding name of 
linden. In the city of Berlin there is a w T ide 






36 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


street that has lindens planted on either side, and 
for this reason it is called “ Under the Lindens.” 

The small, cream-colored flowers in spring are 
very sweet. The bees And some of their best 
honey in linden blossoms. This honey is called 


basswood honey. Bass- 
is the common 
for linden. 



The most cu- 
gs*. rious thing about 
the linden fam¬ 
ily is the wing 


American linden seed. 


of its seed. This wing is a leaflike bract, the lower 
part of which is grown against the stem which bears 
the little, pealike seeds. 

The outer bark of the linden is dark gray, and 
in old trees full of deep cracks, but the inner is 
fibrous and tough. We often used this bark instead 
of ropes for swings. 


THE ELMS. 


The forest contained a number of American or 
white elm trees. This splendid tree has been called 
the home tree, because it is planted so much about 
our homes, especially in the eastern part of the 
United States. 


THE ELMS. 


37 


The crown of the elm takes many forms. One 
the vase form. The roots start out from the 



Slippery elm. 
















38 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


trunk above ground and form the foot of the vase. 
The branches form the bowl, and the little droop¬ 
ing twigs the turned-over rim. 

The sheaf form is a little taller than the vase 
form. The plumose shape has most of its branches 
on one side, so that it resembles a long, wavy plume. 
The fan-shaped is not so common. There is one 
of this form in Central Illinois that covers more than 
an acre. Large meetings have been held under its 
broad, shady branches. There is an elm at Plymouth, 
N. II., so large that four men taking hold of hands 
can scarcely encircle its trunk. 

The leaf of the elm is rather rough. That of 
the red elm is rough on both sides, has a pointed 
apex, and a double-toothed margin. 

We did not have much chewing gum, but we 
had what is more wholesome—the inner bark of the 
“ slippery ” or red elm. This bark has a pleasant 
odor, and is sold in drug stores as a medicine. 
When soaked in water it becomes soft and slip- 
pery. 

The rock or cork elm was found along the 
creek. The wood of this elm is tough, and can be 
split only with great difficulty. Elm wood is much 
used for furniture and for fence posts. 



Typical forms of elm trees. 

Sheaf. Vase. 

Fan. Plume. 































40 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


THE POPLARS. 

Another kind of trees stood in groups on the 
higher ground. These trees had straight, slender, 
white trunks, which could be seen through the open 



spots in the foliage of other trees. They looked like 
the white trunks of the paper birch, but the leaves 
were a lighter green, and the slightest breeze made 
them tremble all over the branches. When a gust 


THE POPLARS. 


41 


of wind struck them they seemed to slap each 
other in laughing glee. I often stood and watched 
their antics. 

Why do they behave so ? They can not help 
it. They are fastened to the tree by a petiole or 
stem which is flattened vertically. If you will hold 
one in your fingers and blow at it sideways, the 
leaf will tell you its own story. You will make a 
discovery. 

These trees are straight, not over forty feet 
high, and have small branches. They are a variety 
of poplars known by the name American aspen, 
or quaking asp. 

In the East, where they grow near good water 
power, the wood of these trees is ground to a pulp 
and made into paper, which is used for pails and 
other useful articles. 

Along the low grounds stood a number of pop¬ 
lars nearly a hundred feet high and about two feet 
in diameter. They had rough dark-gray trunks. 
Their leaves were larger and their margins more 
jagged than those of the American aspen. 

As soon as this tree is covered with leaves its 
little catkins change to green, berrylike balls, which 
contain the seed. The seeds have a pappus or feath¬ 
ery substance attached to them of fine, white fibers, 
which look like cotton. When ripe, the little balls 



Young Lombardy poplar. 




WALNUT AND BUTTERNUT. 


43 


open and tlie wind scatters the seeds. Sometimes 
these cotton fibers almost cover the ground in the 
neighborhood of the trees. You will at once see 
why the tree is called the cottonwood. 

This tree has been frequently planted as a shade 
tree in the prairie States. Its wood, like that of all 
poplars, is rather soft and brittle. As fuel it burns 
rapidly, but gives little heat. Being odorless, it is 
now much used for packing-boxes for crackers and 
other food. It goes by the name of whitewood. 

Perhaps you will find another tree growing near 
some home which you will at once recognize as a 
poplar from its trembling leaves. It has many 
small, switchlike branches, which grow almost straight 
up beside the trunk. The tree grows easily and 
rapidly, and for this reason, in Iowa and some other 
States, it has been planted close together in rows 
to form wind-brakes; -but when it gets to be a dozen 
or more years old some of its branches begin to 
die, giving it a ragged appearance. It is a native 
of Italy, of the province of Lombardy, and in that 
way it gets its name, Lombardy poplar. 


WALNUT AND BUTTERNUT. 

There were two other kinds of trees in the forest 
that attracted our attention, especially at nutting 


44 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


time. They were tall, rather large trees, with stout, 
spreading branches, and dark-gray furrowed bark, 
which was smooth in the young trees. These were 

the black walnut 
and the butternut 
or white walnut. 

Both have a 
compound leaf; 
the black walnut 
has as many as 
twenty - one leaf¬ 
lets on a stem, 
and the butternut 
seventeen. The 
flowers in spring are long, thick tassels, four to six 
inches in length. 

The nuts ripen with the first frost. The boys 
eagerly look for the frost, for they know that the 
next day’s wind will bring many of the nuts to the 
ground. The nuts still remaining on the trees often 
tempt brave boys to climb into the branches after 
them, but they usually find it.a very dizzy job. 

The chipmunks and red squirrels are busy, too, 
getting their share of the nuts. One day while we 
were out nutting I sat down under a large walnut 
tree. It was not windy, yet the nuts kept on falling, 
one by one. I wondered what made them fall, and 



WALNUT AND BUTTERNUT. 


45 


soon discovered two red squirrels up in the trees 
cutting off the nuts as fast as they could with their 



Black walnut tree in October. 


sharp teeth. I said, “Thank you, Little Sharp 
Eyes—thank you ; you are very kind to help me.” 
The black walnut is round, the white walnut or 





46 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


butternut, lemon-shaped. Both have a pulpy, rough, 
green husk, which has a bitter juice that stains the 
lingers, so that for a week or two it may be easily 
seen who has been nutting. 

The wood of the walnut is dark purple brown, 
while that of the butternut has a reddish tinge. 

Many a noble walnut tree is cut down to satisfy 
the greed of its owner, as the lumber brings a high 
price. These trees which once were abundant are 
now becoming scarce. 

The largest walnut tree I ever heard of was re¬ 
cently cut in southern Indiana. The stump meas¬ 
ured nine feet across, and the first limb was sixty 
feet from the ground. 

The English walnut is not so large as the other 
varieties, but its nut is more valuable. Orchards of 
this tree may be planted in the southern part of the 
United States and prove very profitable. 

THE HICKORY TREE. 

The boys and squirrels, tqo, were sure to find an¬ 
other nut in this small forest. It was not quite so 
large as the walnut. 

Its shell, which is less pulpy, separates naturally 
into four equal or nearly equal parts, and the nut 
is slightly angular. The flavor of the nut is so ex- 


THE HICKORY TREE. 


47 


cellent, that it is preferred to the walnut and butter¬ 
nut. 



Shagbark hickory. 








48 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


Tlie hickory tree which bears these nuts is found 
in nearly all the Northern States, and even as far 
south as Florida. It often grows in groups or 
colonies. 

I found two kinds in our forest. One has dark- 
gray bark which hangs in strips from the tree and 


gives the trunk a ragged 
look, from which it gets 
the name shagbark, or 
shellbark. The other 
kind we called bitternut. 
The bark is somewhat 
furrowed, but does not 
peel off. 



There are six other 
kinds of hickory in the 
United States. One of 
them is the pecan. This 


Bitternut—portion of leaf. 


one may be called the hickory of the South, because 
it thrives in the southern half of the United States. 

The pecan-nut is smoother and has a thinner 
husk than the shellbark. It. is oblong in shape like 
the kernel of a peanut. 

The pecan may be planted for profit. An orchard 
will begin to bear in eight or nine years. It has 
been much improved by cultivation. I have seen 
pecan-nuts from one tree in Mississippi that were 


THE HAZELNUT. 


49 


two and a half inches long, and had a very thin shell, 
on account of which they are called the paper-shell 
pecans. 

All the hickories have a compound 
leaf. The shellbark has five and some¬ 
times seven leaflets, and the pecan has 
from thirteen to fif¬ 


teen. The leaflets are 
all pointed, and most 
of them are slightly 
hairy or downy on the 
under side. 

These trees are both 
handsome and useful. 




Pecan-nut in husk. Pecan leaflet. 


The finely shaped head of 
soft, green foliage forms an object of beauty in forest 
and garden. 

The wood is fine-grained, tough and elastic, and of 
a white color, except the heartwood, which is reddish. 
It is used for carriage wheels, handles and other 
articles requiring toughness, and vies with the hard 
maple as fuel. 


THE HAZELNUT. 

I must not forget to speak of the hazelnut which 
grew all round the edge of the forest. It is a shrub 

from five to eight feet high, has a stem one half to 

5 / 



50 


HAROLD'S QUESTS. 


an inch thick dividing into branches near the top 
and bearing coarse, double-toothed leaves. 

The blossom is a smooth, round catkin; the nuts 
are nearly round and incased in a bony shell. These 
nuts grow in bunches of three to five, occasionally 
only one or two. Each nut is inclosed in two thick, 
leaflike bracts or husks with fringed edges. These 
separate when the fruit is ripe. 

There is a kind of hazelnut imported from Europe 
which is oblong and is sold under the name of filberts. 



The kernel of the hazelnut is solid. It is not di¬ 
vided, like the kernel of the walnut and hickory nut, 



THE HEIGHT OF TREES. 


51 


by irregular partitions. The nut is easily picked and 
taken from its shell. 

THE HEIGHT OF TREES. 

Where is the boy that has never asked the ques¬ 
tion, “How high is that tree?” Every boy likes to 
make a guess at least. But I know a little boy who 
found out an easy way to measure the height of 
trees. 

There was a tall walnut tree standing in his back 
yard. He spent many an hour in summer-time play¬ 
ing in its shadow. More than once he asked his 
mamma how tall she thought the tree was, but he did 
not seem to feel satisfied with her answer. He 
thought about it a great deal. 

One beautifnl forenoon he suddenly ran into 
the house, and said : “ Oh, mamma, I’ve found out! ” 
“Found what?” asked his mamma. “I’ve found 
out how tall our tree is.” 

I’m sure you can not guess how he did it. 
He had nothing but a two-foot rule and a stake. 
He had driven the stake into the ground and tied his 
pull-rope to it. While he was swinging he noticed 
the shadow of the stake. He measured it and found 
that it was just as long as the stake was high. Then 
he said to himself : “ If the shadow of the stake is as 


52 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 



long as the stake, the shadow of the tree will be the 
same as the tree.” 


Measuring height of walnut tree. 


He measured the shadow of the tree and found it 
to be sixty-two feet. “ Our tree is sixty-two feet 
high,” said he. And I think he was right. In the 
same way he measured the height of other trees and 
also of the house. 

Twice a day the shadow of all upright objects will 
be equal in length to their height. Any boy or girl 
can find out what time of day that is by watching the 
changing shadows and then measuring the shadow of 
a post and of the tree. It is also true that twice a 
day the shadow of an object is twice its own height. 






THE AGE OP TREES. 


53 


THE AGE OF TREES. 

“ I wonder how old our tree is ? ” was another ques¬ 
tion that the little wide-awake boy had some trouble 
in answering. He took his mother’s tapeline and 
measured his tree around the trunk a foot above the 
ground. “ It is fifty-four inches,” he said to me. “ I 
wonder if it is as many years old.” I told him I 
thought not. 



Then I showed him some pieces of wood cut from 
different kinds of trees. He soon noticed the rings at 
the ends. “ What made these rings ? ” he asked. 
“ Can we tell by the rings how old the tree is ? ” 

“ Perhaps you can,” was my reply. “ This piece 








54 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


was cut from an ash-leaved maple, the seed of which 
I planted four years ago. You see it has four rings. 
Here is one from a soft maple eight years old which 
has eight rings, and this is another which is twelve 
years old and it has twelve rings, as you see. Every 
year the tree adds one ring.” 

I took the little boy to a part of the woods where 
many trees had been cut down for cord-wood the win¬ 
ter before. The trees were red oaks. We counted 
the rings of ten stumps. The smallest one had 
twenty-five rings and the largest forty-seven. It was 
not always easy to count the rings, especially on the 
north side of the stump. We noticed, too, that the 
rings were a little thicker on the south side as well as 
more distinct. Do you think this is because the north 
side is so much in the shade ? 

Still the little boy was not able to tell the age of 
his tree, until one day he was taken to a sawmill 
where he saw a number of walnut logs. He at once 
measured the distance around them and found one 
about as large as the tree in his yard. He counted 
thirty-four rings on it, and, concluded that his tree 
must be about thirty-four years old. He was quite 
certain that he was right. 

I told him that he ought to measure and count the 
rings of other logs, and if he did so he would proba¬ 
bly find that walnut trees which had stood near the 


THE AGE OF TREES. 


55 


valley grew faster than those on the hill, and there¬ 
fore a walnut tree which grew on a hill and measured 
fifty-four inches would be older than one of the same 
girth grown near the foot of the slope. 

The age of trees is very interesting. If we look 
at the end of a log, we shall find that the rings of an¬ 
nular growth are thickest near the center and become 
thinner as we approach the bark. In old trees the 
outer layers are so thin that it is difficult to count 
them. The larger the tree grows, the more wood it 
takes to make a ring of the same thickness. 

Everybody has noticed the rapid growth of young 
trees. The branches extend outward and upward 
considerably every year. I measured the branches of 
an ash-leaved maple five years old, and found that in 
one year seventeen branches grew over fifteen inches 
in length, and five of them over two feet. Old trees 
lengthen their branches very little in a single year. 

I planted an ash-leaved maple, or box-elder, as 
it is usually called. The first year it grew a shoot 
four feet high and three fourths of an inch in diame¬ 
ter. This made a ring three eighths of an inch thick. 
The second year it grew a ring only two eighths of an 
inch in thickness. From this we may see that the 
tree did not put on as thick a layer of wood the 
second year as the first, but it made more wood, as the 
ring was larger and the trunk taller. 


56 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


Mr. Baldwin, of Florida, who has kept a record, 
claims that the rings do not always tell the true age of 
the tree. He says that he counted forty rings on 
the stump of a tree which he knows was not over 
thirty years old. 

Hon. Robert Furness, of Nebraska, claims that a 
pig hickory, eleven years old, had sixteen rings; a 
green ash, eight years old, eleven rings; a coffee tree, 
ten years old, fourteen rings; and a bur oak, only ten 
years old, had twenty-four rings. 

There are others who have similar records. They 
say that the difference between the number of rings 
and the age of the trees is caused by sudden and great 
changes in climate, such as often occur in Florida and 
in Nebraska. 

In such regions a tree may start to grow very 
early in the spring, and after a few months, on ac¬ 
count of very dry weather, may stop growing until 
heavy rains start it again. Some think that the 
growth of such a year will appear in two rings. I 
must say, however, that botanists, as a rule, do not 
believe that a tree has more rings than it is years old. 

These statements ought to make us think and lead 
us to keep a record of trees that are planted in our 
neighborhood. The record should begin with the 
seed, and contain the dates of all droughts, and if any 
of the trees are cut down the rings should be care- 


THE AGE OP TREES. 57 

fully counted about a foot from the ground and the 
number put down in the record. 

“ Do not trees live longer than anything else ? ” 
inquired Willie one day. This question set us to 
thinking. 

Man sometimes lives to be more than a hundred 
years old. We are told that in olden times men 
lived six, seven, or eight hundred years. Methuselah, 
the oldest man, was nine hundred and sixty-nine 
years old when he died. 

Turtles are said to have reached the age of one 
hundred and fifty years. But there are trees that 
were old when Columbus discovered America, under 
which the Indians had made many a treaty with 
each other and smoked many a pipe of peace. 

I heard a good botanist say that there are trees 
in this country known to be two thousand two hun¬ 
dred years old. 

An old tree was cut down in the western part of 
England. On the stump seven hundred and eighty 
rings were counted, and then there was still more 
than three inches of wood near the bark where the 
rings were so close together that it was impossible to 
count them. There are cedars in Europe and the 
Holy Land that are doubtless more than two thou¬ 
sand years old. 


58 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


ANIMAL LIFE IN THE FOREST. 

Did you ever think that there are different levels 
of life in the forest ? In the highest branches of 
the trees live the eagle, vulture, and hawk—the 



Black bear. 




THE CHIPMUNK. 


59 


upper-tens of bird society. A little lower we may 
find the homes of the woodpeckers and pigeons, and 
some of the squirrels; among the lower branches 
many of the song birds build their nests. On the 
ground roam the wild animals—the panther, the 
deer, the American lion, and the wild-cat, which 
looks like a large cat, except that its eyes are fierce 
and its thick tail is about two thirds as long as the 
cat’s. Under the surface, among the roots, the 
chipmunk, rabbit, woodchuck, and sly but proud 
old fox make their dark dens, while the rifts and 
caves in the rocks are the hiding places of the wolf 
and the bear. 

The animals of one level are more or less fearful 
of those in other levels Those in the highest level 
are the fiercest of birds; those in the lowest, the 
fiercest of heasts. 

THE CHIPMUNK. 

I well remember tw r o white oaks that leaned 
over an old rail fence.. They seemed to have the 
same root. One of them was hollow, and was the 
doorway to the happy home of a family of chip¬ 
munks. They were very cunning little creatures. 
I often saw them skip along the fence between the 
rails as I passed by within a few rods of the trees. 


60 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


The chipmunk is a bright little fellow, always 
at work. Sometimes he is called the ground or 
striped squirrel, but his most familiar name is 
chipmunk. He is a cousin of the red squirrel, but 
they do not seem to get along together very well. 

He is yellowish-brown above and lighter below. 
You can easily recognize him by the five black and 
white stripes down his back. His large bright eyes 
watch every move you make. He is not a good 
climber like the red squirrel, but he is clever at 
digging a hole in the ground, where his naughty 
cousin can’t get at him and his pantry. 



Chipmunk scolding. 

He goes to sleep as early as October, and stays 
in his warm winter bed till March or April. During 
that time he wakes up now and then to eat a little. 

About the end of April the chipmunk has a 
family of from four to six little ones, and then he 


THE CHIPMUNK. 


61 



ir- ' j 

The red squirrel. 


has plenty to do. As soon as they are old enough 
to leave the nest, the whole family come out for a 
grand scamper along the fence. I often watched 
the merry little creatures chasing each other around, 
playing hide - and - 
seek. 

About the end 
of August Father 
and Mother Chip¬ 
munk think it is 
time for the little 
ones to get to work. 

So they all go 
nutting. It is very 
funny, indeed, to see them coming home with their 
cheeks so puffed out that their little noses are almost 
hidden. They look as if they had the mumps. 

But they are only carrying home some nuts or 
seeds in the pouches in their cheeks which are made 
for this very purpose. The chipmunks are regular 
little misers, and work very busily till they have a 
wonderful supply of food—more than they can eat 
during the winter. They hide it away very care¬ 
fully from the red squirrel and from other enemies, 
in a storehouse which is near the nest, so as to be 
handy. 

The entrance to their home is almost always 



62 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


under some stump or rock, and opens into a passage¬ 
way about ten or twelve feet long. This passage¬ 
way leads straight down for 
some distance, and then 
slants upward toward sev¬ 
eral chambers. One of 
these chambers is the nest, 
which is lined with dry 
leaves. The others are used 
for storehouses. 

Sometimes there is a 
second or even a third entrance, but all of them are 
well hidden, for the chipmunk knows that his ene¬ 
mies, the sly weasel and the ermine, are always on 
the watch to find his home and family. 



Chipmunk. 


THE FLYING SQUIRREL. 

This reminds me of the flying squirrels which 
had built a large nest of leaves in a small red oak 
not far from the chipmunk. 

I first discovered the nest in the autumn, after the 
leaves of most of the trees had fallen. The nest 
was even larger than a crow’s. As I was standing 
and looking at it one windy day, I saw what I 
thought were leaves blowing away from the tree, 
first one, and then another, and then a third. I 



THE FLYING SQUIRREL. 


63 


soon discovered that they were not falling leaves, 
but flying squirrels, sailing down from the branches 
near the nest to the lower branches of another tree 
some thirty feet distant. Then they ran up to the 
top of this tree and sailed off again as before. 



These squirrels do not possess wings, but have a 
loose skin on each side of the body, extending from 
the front to the hind feet, and when they fly, or 



64 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


rather jump, from one tree to another, they stretch 
this skin by spreading their feet as far apart as 
possible. 

I know a little boy who watched a flying squirrel 
and made up his mind that he could fly too by tying 
a blanket to his wrists and ankles. He was just 
about to spread his arms and fly off the porch roof, 
when his father appeared and told him he had 
better begin by jumping from the table which stood 
in the yard. He did so, but after that he did not 
care to try the porch roof. 

The flying squirrel builds his nest in a tree, but 
often puts his storehouse in another tree some dis¬ 
tance away. He begins his sound winter sleep early 
in November, and we do not see him again till 
March. Sometimes, however, he wakes up and 
makes a flying visit to his storehouse to get a bite 
or two. 

I did not see the flying squirrels out very often, 
for they usually do not appear till after sunset, but 
they are then very lively. The flying squirrel, the 
bat, and the owl are a wideawake trio in the forest 
at dusk. Though the flying squirrels live in the 
open sunshine, and do not burrow in the ground like 
the chipmunk, they seem to be blinded by the bright 
sun during the day. The little ones are easily tamed 
and make cunning pets. 


THE FLYING SQUIRREL. 


65 


On a cold day in midwinter I found a thirteen- 
striped gopher, which is one of the many cousins 
of the flying squirrel and chipmunk. He was curled 
up in the center of a large strawstack. He had his 



nose between his front legs and on his breast right 
against his heart. The hind part of the body was 
rolled around his head and neck, and the tail was 
wound around the outside. He looked like a little 
bundle tied with a string. 

I put him in my pocket and took him into the 
warm house. At first I could not see any motion 
of his body, but as soon as he became warm I saw 
signs of life. He drew a short breath, and in a 
moment another. Then his heart began to beat 
slowly, and he began to stretch his limbs, and un¬ 
wind himself. By this time his heart and lungs 
seemed to work all right. In less than an hour he 
was running around the room, though he seemed 
somewhat bewildered. 

Many animals go to sleep in this way. They are 

a 


66 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


usually fat in the fall when they begin their sleep, 
but thin in the spring. When in this sleep they live 
very slowly upon the fat stored in their bodies, just 
as a sick person does who has no appetite. This 
winter sleep is called lii-ber-na-tion, and the animals 
which gb to sleep in this way are said to hibernate. 
It is strange that some animals of the same family 
hibernate and others do not. Most of the squirrel 
family hibernate, but the gray and the red squirrel 
or chickaree do not, as I see them very often during 
the winter. Perhaps you can find other squirrels 
which are like them in this respect. 


THE HERMIT AMONG ANIMALS. 

Joining the woods on one side was a clover field. 
One September, as I was crossing this field, I saw a 
small, chubby animal sitting upon its haunches not 
more than two rods before me. At first I thought 
it might be a skunk, but I soon saw my mistake. 
This animal had a thicker body and a broader face, 
and was without the white stripe which extends up 
the middle of the face of the skunk and along the 
back to the tail. Then too his fur was of a grayish- 
red color, while the skunk’s is mostly black. 

I stood still to get a good view of the creature, 
but he soon dropped down and lay as quiet as if 


THE HERMIT AMONG ANIMALS. 67 

asleep. I moved slowly along, and when I was 
within three yards of him, he tumbled into his hole. 

Then I called my dog, and he began at once to 
dig for the animal. But it was too much for him 
alone. So I got a spade and we soon found the old 
fellow and his mate. The burrow went almost di¬ 
rectly downward four and a half feet, then it turned 
off horizontally for about a foot, when it became a 
double tunnel. 

These two tunnels, after making nearly a half 
circle, and leading slightly upward, met again in a 
small, round chamber. In this was a soft bed of 
dry leaves and grass, which formed the lonely home 
of the woodchuck, the animal I had seen sitting on 
his haunches. When he found that he could not 
get away, he showed fight, but I got a noose round 
his body and took him home to tame him. 

The woodchuck is a queer creature. Mr. Math¬ 
ews says that if one could shake a red and a gray 
squirrel together in a bag until they became one 
animal with a coat neither red nor gray, then blow 
the thing up with a bellows into thrice its former 
size, jam the face together, trim down the ears, 
enlarge the paws, chop off half the tail, and finish 
by knocking just half the life out of it, one would 
have a fair imitation of the woodchuck. 

Sleepy! I should say. To sleep was the one 


68 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


thing my woodchuck seemed to enjoy most, espe¬ 
cially from September to April. If I put him into 
a cold room, he put his head between his front paws 
and rolled himself up into a bundle as round as a 
doughnut, and slept so soundly that I could not wake 
him up until I took him into a warm room. He 
seemed to be about half asleep even in the summer. 



Woodchucks. 


Although the woodchuck appears so stupid, I 
taught him some things easily enough. lie sat on 
his haunches and listened to the soft playing of a 
violin for half an hour. He would climb into a 
chair and sit up looking as silly as ever an animal 
could. He would take rags and hay into his box. 
He was most comical when given a long string to 
pull into his den. 






THE HERMIT AMONG ANIMALS. 


69 


The woodchuck lives on herbs and grasses, hut 
clover is his favorite diet. He does considerable 
damage to clover fields by the dirt he throws out 
in burrowing. He is a good digger, and it is from 
his habit of throwing out dirt that he gets his name 
—according to a story given by Mr. Mathews : 

A long time ago all the lesser animals lived in a 
country ruled over by a judge—the dog. One day 
the rabbit, which lived next door to the marmot, 
complained that the latter was always throwing dirt 
out of his burrow into the little rabbits’ eyes, and 
asked him to stop it. The marmot paid no attention 
to what the rabbit had said. At last the rabbit told 
the judge all about it, and he at once ordered the 
marmot to be more careful where he threw the dirt. 
This made the marmot angry, and he replied that 
he “ would ch uck his dirt just wherever he pleased.” 
Ever since that time the marmot has kept the name 
woodchuck, and the dog is still hunting for him. 

Some naturalists say that the woodchuck lays up 
a store of hay and leaves for the winter in a special 
chamber said to be sometimes seven feet in diameter. 
The woodchuck that I dug out had not a thing stored 
for food except his own fat, which literally stuffed 
his body. 

Some say that he is the longest and soundest 
winter sleeper of all hibernating animals, and doesn’t 


70 


HAROLD'S QUESTS. 


wake up to eat any food lie may have stored. The 
frog and the turtle do not settle down in the mud 
for their winter sleep until the frost has killed the 
insects on which they live. The black bear does not 
go into his winter cave before the cold winter snows 
compel him to. Even the flying squirrel, which is 
the next soundest sleeper to the woodchuck, waits 
until his last crop of nuts is gathered in; but the 
woodchuck begins his sleep in the warm days of late 
September, and continues it until the buds begin to 
swell. 

Many people believe that the actions of the 
woodchuck, or ground-hog, as he is called, have 
considerable effect on the weather. If he comes out 
of his burrow the second day of February (Candle¬ 
mas Day), and the sun shines so that he sees his 
shadow, he will return and delay the spring six 
weeks by sleeping that much longer. This, of 
course, is false; but he doubtless comes to try the 
weather, and if it is cold returns to his comparatively 
warm nest until he gets hungry enough to come out 
for food again. 

The woodchuck has from four to six young ones 
about the latter part of April. These remain with 
their mother until shortly before the hibernating time, 
when each goes out into the world to make his own 
burrow and begin the hermit life of a woodchuck. 





Prairie-dogs. 





















HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


Y2 

The prairie-dog, which is a rodent closely related 
to the woodchuck, lives in villages. A few years ago 
I drove across the plains of Dakota and passed by a 
very large prairie-dog village which extended over 



Skull of rodent gopher. Side, bottom, and top views. 


several miles. The prairie-dogs had dug over thou¬ 
sands of acres in making their burrows. Every rod 
or so throughout this village one of these little crea¬ 
tures was sitting up as a sentinel. When he dropped 
down another one immediately took his place. It 
was a comical sight. 



RABBITS. 


73 


RABBITS. 

The chipmunk and flying squirrel have each four 
large front teeth like the gray squirrel I told you about. 
They like to gnaw with these teeth, and for that rea¬ 
son they are called rodents. Rodent means gnawer. 

Rats, mice, and rabbits also belong to this order 
of animals, because they too have each four long front 
teeth. 



Rabbits. 


Besides chipmunks and flying squirrels I used to 
see many rabbits in this little forest, and often chased 
them into their burrows, which were made at the 
foot of trees in among the roots. 

The young wild rabbits are among the most . 
harmless, timid-looking creatures. I have often 
caught them and held them in my hand. Their 
soft, dark eyes seemed so full of fear and their 
little hearts beat so fast, that I could do them no 
harm. I caught many of the old rabbits in winter 
with a box-trap baited with corn. 


u 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


THE QUAIL. 

Sometimes a covey of quails came across my trap, 
and seeing the corn, went in to enjoy it. Much to 
their surprise, doubtless, they found themselves lit¬ 
erally “in a box.” 

In the winter time quails collect in bevies and 
live among underbrush at the edge of the woods. 
They usually roost on the ground in a circle, tail to 
tail, and heads outward. They do not fly till you get 
close up to them, when they start up with a loud, 
whirring noise, but they soon alight and run off 
among the thickets. I have seen as many as twenty- 
five run off in that way among the brush, following 
their leader, and making a little path in the snow 
scarcely more than two inches wide. 

Quails are very plain, Quakerlike birds, dressed 
in sober browns. Bob brightens up his costume a 
little with a black and white cravat. 

In the spring they pair off and frequent grain 
fields. It is not easy to find the nest. It is cunningly 
hidden away in a hollow, usually in the grass on the 
open prairie or in a wheat field under a tuft of grain 
or grass which completely hides it, leaving only a door 
on the side. Perhaps you will find the nest full of 
pure, white, top-shaped eggs, fifteen or even more. 


THE QUAIL. 


75 

As soon as the little ones are hatched they leave 
the nest with the parent birds. 

In the latter part of July 1 came upon such a 
family in a wheat field which had just been cut. 



Bob White. 


Suddenly, directly in front of me, the old quails flew 
off a rod or two with a whirring noise, and the little 
ones ran as fast as they could in every direction and 
hid among the stubble. I lay down flat and kept 




TO 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


perfectly quiet to see what would follow. In a few 
minutes the old quails uttered low, soft calls and the 
little ones came out of their hiding places and ran to 
them. 

In the spring you can often hear the quail as he 
sits on a fence post whistling his clear notes, u Bob 
White! Bob-Bob White! ” Bob White has thus be¬ 
come his most familiar name, and I like it better than 
quail, don’t you ? 

Bob White is a game biid and is very good to eat. 
So many of them have been trapped and shot that 
there are few left. They are easily tamed, and like 
to build their nests near farmhouses and eat with the 
chickens. They are very helpful to the farmers, be¬ 
cause they eat the seeds of weeds and destroy the 
weevil that is found in wheat fields, besides other 
harmful insects. 


BEER. 

I must not forget to tell you about two deer which 
I came upon suddenly one winter’s day. The snow 
was about a foot deep. I drove into the woods with 
a bobsled to,a place where the day before a tree had 
been chopped down. The branches had been cut off 
and thrown in a heap. Beside this heap I saw the two 
deer lying. 1 had scarcely come in sight when one, 


DEER. 


77 


which I knew to be the buck, quickly jumped up, 
holding his head high in the air. I was looking right 
between the horses, so that he could not see me until 
I got within about a 
hundred yards of 
him. By this time 
the doe, too, had 
risen, and both 
bounded off with 
such easy, graceful 
leaps, that it seemed 
to me it was no 
trouble at all to 
them to get over 
the ground. 



Head of deer. 


Deer are timid animals. When danger is near 
they depend upon their swiftness of foot. For this 
reason they are always on the alert. Three of their 
senses—hearing, seeing, and smelling—are well de¬ 
veloped. Their ears are placed on the side of the 
head and turn backwards and are sure to hear the 
slightest sound of approaching footsteps. Their large 
bright eyes detect every movement within sight. It 
is impossible to approach them from the windward 
side, as their keen sense of smell quickly warns 
them of the presence of an enemy. 

When a number of deer are together, one or more 



78 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


of them act as sentinels. They hold their heads up 
high, sniff the air, and look around in all directions. 
They seem to know that the safety of the herd de¬ 
pends upon them. 

Antelope, which are very much like deer, though 
smaller, are even more alert. It is almost impossible 
to get near them. The hunter can approach them 
only where he can completely conceal himself in 
bushes or behind rocks. 



Pair of deer. 


A hunter one time saw a herd feeding on a hill in 
an open place. An old buck was standing guard, 
turning his head now this way and now that, so that 













80 


HAROLD'S QUESTS. 


tlie lmnter had to lie flat on the ground and drag 
himself along in the grass, hiding behind little lumps 
and ant-hills. He had to move so slowly and care¬ 
fully, that it took him three hours to move three hun¬ 
dred yards. 

I believe the antelope has the most beautiful eye 
of all animals. It is a soft dark brown, easily taken 
for black. He has small, dainty 
feet, with long, black, shiny 
hoofs. 

One of the most interesting 
things about the deer family is 
their antlers. Only the males 
have them, and they shed them 
once a year. About the time 
the trees begin to bud the an¬ 
tlers begin to grow. At first a 
small bony knob, covered with velvety skin, appears 
on each side of the forehead. When this knob 
is a few inches long it divides into two parts and 
forms the first branch. Thus it grows on, adding 
branches and becoming harder all the time until the 
antlers are well grown, which is about the end of 
August. They are a bony growth, covered with a 
soft, velvety skin. Then this skin begins to dry and 
to peel off in strips. The buck wears it off by rub¬ 
bing his antlers against trees and brush. The bone ? 




7 


(From photograph, and United States Natural History Government Reports.; 














82 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


though at first white, tarns a dirty gray and becomes 
hard and smooth. In December the antlers fall off 
and the skin grows over the scar. 

I believe that a buck adds one branch to his 
antlers every year except the first year. If that is 
true, we can tell how old a buck is by adding one to 
the number of branches of his antlers. 

The antelope has no antlers; he has true hollow 
horns like the cow’s, though not of the same shape. 
The horns have a bony center, which grows out 
from the top of the head. This bony core is covered 
with a horny shell. Every year a thin skin grows be¬ 
tween this shell and the core. This skin begins to 



Deer’s antlers. 


harden and becomes bony, first at the point, then 
more and more toward the head, until the new horn 
is formed and forces the old one off. Only the 
American antelope grows new horns every year; 
other species retain the horns during the life of the 
animal. 

In November the bucks, or male deer, are very 



Doe and fawns 









84 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


jealous of each other, and often have long and terrible 
fights. Sometimes the antlers of old bucks become 
locked so that the deer are unable to separate and 
either starve or are torn to pieces by wolves or other 
wild animals. 

The young of the deer are born in May. There 
are usually two, and they are called fawns. It is a 
most interesting sight to see a pair of fawns gambol 



Bucks fighting. 


and play. They are quite as active as lambs, but 
very much more graceful. Then their bright eyes are 
always looking around to see what things are. When 
scared they leap with wonderful grace and swiftness. 
They eat almost everything that comes in their way. 
It is reported that a fawn once ate a package of 
tobacco, but he died the next day. 


THE WOLF. 


85 


THE WOLF. 

In a cave near the west end of the forest an old 
wolf made his home. Whenever he was hungry he 
took a trip to the pasture fields near by to look after 
the sheep, much to their sorrow but greatly to his 
own satisfaction. He killed several of our sheep. 
He bit the sheep in the throat and tore the breast 
open to get at the vitals; the rest he left. We often 
watched for him and chased him, but it was three 
years before he was hunted down by one of the 
neighbors who had lost several sheep. 

The wolf looks like a dog. His body is rather 
long and the muzzle is more pointed than that of 
most dogs. A wolfs tracks may be distinguished 
from those of the dog, by the fact that the wolf sets 
his feet behind each other, while the dog places one 
hind foot a little out of line as he trots along. 

It is claimed by naturalists that the dog is de¬ 
scended from tamed wolves. This may be so; but as 
the dog has been with man throughout the ages of 
history, may it not be possible that wolves have 
descended from dogs that were left to run wild ? 
What do you think about this ? 

In wild regions of the world wolves are still 
found in great numbers, and sometimes even become 



Coyotes—American prairie wolves. 













SNAKES. 


87 


dangerous to travelers. When they are very hungry 
they will attack man. Travelers shudder to hear 
the howling of a pack of wolves. It is a very dismal 
sound, and one never to be forgotten. 

The dog and all other flesh-eating animals have 
pointed, jagged teeth, not suitable for grinding but 
for tearing the food. This order of animals is called 
carnivora (< carnis , flesh, and vora , eaters). It includes 
the dog family, the cat family, bears, weasels, and 
others. 


SNAKES. 

Near the wolf’s den in the forest was a “sink¬ 
hole ”—that is, a rift in the rocks below the surface, 
into which the brook ran. All the soil that had 
been on top of the rocks was washed down by the 
brook. This made the hole funnel-shaped. 

About three miles farther down the valley a 
stream of water came bubbling up between the rocks, 
called “ Big Spring.” It is generally supposed that 
this water was the brook which disappeared in the 
sink-hole and flowed under ground between rocks for 
that distance. Around the Big Spring, on both sides 
of the valley, were rugged rocks and high cliffs. In 
these rocks could be found many rifts and small 
caves. One of these caves was known as “Battle- 
snake Den.” One beautiful summer day a number of 


88 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


the boys went to this cave with their guns and killed 
twenty-three rattlesnakes that varied from a foot and 
a half to about six feet in length. 

How does a snake get over the ground ? The 
bird has wings, the fish lias fins, and most animals 
have legs on which to move. But what has the 
snake ? 

The snake has a great many ribs which are fas¬ 
tened to the backbone. The lower ends of the ribs 

extend to the skin on 
the under side. They 
can be moved at will by 
the snake. 

If you will put your¬ 
self into a big bag and 
tie it at the neck, then 
get down on your hands 
and knees, imagine your 
arms and thighs ribs, and 
creep along, you will get 

^ , , some idea of how a snake 

Rattlesnake. 

moves. It really walks, 
as it were, on the ends of the ribs. The skin, which 
moves with the ribs, has scales that help the snake 
to push itself along, by catching hold of the objects 
over which it passes. It finds great difficulty in 
getting over a smooth glassy surface. 



SNAKES. 


89 


When a snake moves it bends into curves side- 
wise and not up and down, as is often seen in draw- 



Coiled for a spring. 


ings. It can keep up its swift motion only a short 
distance, as it gets tired very quickly. Snakes move 
about very little except to get food or escape from 
enemies. 

The rattlesnake is copper-colored ; the upper part 
and sides are covered with dark-gray, irregular 
blotches. Like all poisonous snakes, it has a flat head 
and very few teeth. In the front part of the upper 
jaw it has two fangs which it can conceal in the 
gums. A poison sac just below the eye is connected 
with these fangs by a tiny tube which passes through 
them to their points. When a snake becomes angry 
it pushes the fangs forward and the pressure caused 
by biting forces the poison out into the wound. 

One time when I was out in the prairie bare- 


9.0 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


footed, I passed within three feet of a rattlesnake. 
I saw it just as it began to rattle. It was coiled up 
w T ith its head raised in the center of the coil ready 
to spring upon me. I jumped sideways farther than 
I had ever jumped before. 

The most curious thing about the rattlesnake is 
the rattles at the end of its tail. They are hard, 
horny, globular joints, loosely connected. When 
excited the snake shakes its tail violently, and the 
rattle may be heard at some distance. 

Every time the snake sloughs its skin it adds 
a new joint to the rattle between the tail and the 
rattles already formed, so that the oldest rattle is 
always at the end. Sometimes the end joints wear 
off, so that the number of rattles is not always an in¬ 
dication of the age of the snake. 


SOME THINGS ABOUT SOIL. 

The earth on which we live is an immense rocky 
ball. In many places we can see the rocks at the 
surface. But large areas are covered with ground 
or soil, and still larger areas are covered with water. 

If we dig a hole deep enough anywhere in the 
soil, we shall come to rocks. We find rocks even 
under the oceans. Was there ever a time when 
there was no soil anywhere on this rocky ball ? Was 


SAND AND PLANT MATTER. 


91 

there ever a time when there was no water on it? 
We shall have to wait a while before we can answer 
these questions. 

Have you ever thought what would happen if 
every bit of soil should suddenly be taken away? 
There would be no trees, no flowers, no grass, no 
weeds, not a single green thing, and, of course, all 
animals that live on plants would die, neither would 
the animals which live on other animals have any¬ 
thing to live upon. In short, there would be no 
life on the earth at all. Was there ever such a time ? 
Thus we see the great importance of the soil. 


SAND AND PLANT MATTER. 

Everyone knows what we mean when we speak 
of the ground or soil, but few ever stop to think 
what it is made of. 

I asked myself that question, and at once set to 
work to find an answer to it. This is what 1 did: 
f went into the garden and took a cupful of sandy 
soil and put it into a basin. Then I poured water 
on it, and rubbed it between my hands, until all the 
lumps in it had disappeared. 

What did I see ? A number of small roots and 
bits of leaves floated on the water. In fact, the 
surface of the water was covered with them. 


92 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


I slowly poured water into one side of the dish, 
allowing the dirty water to run off at the other side 
into a large pan, and at the same time stirring the 
contents gently. 

Finally I had left in the basin clear sand. There 
was enough to equal one third of a cupful. Thus 
I found two of the things of 
which soil is made—sand, and 
decayed plants which we call 
vegetable mold, and which 
give the soil a dark color. 

What was the rest of it ? 

It was something that made 
the water dirty. I set 
the pan which con- %|||P 
tained this dirty water ' 
in the warm sun until 
all the water had evap¬ 
orated. There was a thick coating of mud in the 
bottom of the pan. When it was thoroughly dry it 
became dust. I took some of this dust and looked 
at it through a microscope* I found that part of 
the little dust particles were fine grains that looked 
like sand, and I concluded that they were grains of 
sand so small that they would float in water when it 
was stirred. When I washed the soil, the larger 
grains only of sand sank to the bottom, while the 



Soil settlings. 







water, plant, and mineral matter. 93 

finer sand floated in the water and was carried over 
into the pan. Thus I found that most of the soil 
which I examined was sand, and that a part, if not 
all, of the rest was decayed leaves, stems, and roots. 

Then I took a cupful of clay soil, and washed it 
as I had done the sandy soil. I found a little sand in 
it and a few bits of leaves and stems, but most of it 
was like paste. It felt smooth and soapy. I did not 
know what it was. 


WATER, PLANT, AND MINERAL MATTER. 

I took a piece of sheet iron and made a small 
pan. It weighed four and a half ounces. I got 
some black garden soil, which I took out six inches 
below the surface. I put some of the soil in the 
pan. The pan and the soil together weighed sixteen 
and a half ounces, making twelve ounces of soil. I 
dried the soil thoroughly on the stove and weighed it 
again. I found that it had lost two ounces, or one 
sixth of its weight. The loss of course was water. 
I made the test at the end of a dry spell or the loss 
would have been greater. 

Then I set the pan on some red-hot coal for sev¬ 
eral hours. On weighing it I found that the soil 
had lost another ounce. All bits of leaves, stems, 
and roots had been burned. 


04 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


The experiment showed that one twelfth of this 
garden soil was plant matter, one sixth was water, 
and the rest was mineral matter—that is, material 
which came from rocks. 

CLAY, LOAM, AND SAKDY SOIL. 

I collected three kinds of soil. One was yellow 
clay; another was a heavy, black soil which I shall 
call loam; the third was a soil composed mostly of 
sand. 

After drying and pulverizing these soils, I put an 
equal quantity of each into a glass chimney, which I 
set into a saucer, as may be seen from the picture. 




Three lamp chimneys, containing different sorts of soil, showing 
the comparative rate of progress made by the water rising in 
each. 

Into these saucers I poured half as much water as 
there was soil in the chimneys. I could see, through 
the glass, how rapidly the water rose in the soil in 
each chimney. 











CLAY, LOAM, AND SANDY SOIL. 95 

When the water had risen to the top of the sandy 
soil, it was only two thirds of the way up in the loam 
and only half way up in the clay. 

Which do you think lost most water in two 
weeks ? You will say the sandy soil, because the 
water rose fastest in it, and therefore evaporated 
fastest at the surface. That would be correct; for I 
found by weighing them that the sandy soil had lost 
about two ounces of \v T ater, the loam an ounce and 
a half, and the clay only a little over an ounce. The 
clay w r as quite moist in the lower part of the chimney 
but dry and hard on the top, while the loam was 
almost as damp at the top of the chimney as it was at 
the bottom. 

Then after adding four ounces of water to each 
saucer, I planted five seeds in each chimney—corn, 
bean, pea, morning-glory, and sunflower—and awaited 
the results. 

On the sixth day I noticed two seeds coming np 
in the sandy soil, but nothing was to be seen in the 
other soils until the eighth day, when three appeared 
in the clay. Those in the loam did not appear until 
the ninth day. Some of the seeds in all the chimneys 
failed to come up. I added a little water, the same 
amount to each chimney, every second day. 

Those in the sandy soil grew most rapidly, but 
soon looked thin and wilted; those in the clay 


96 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


came up next, but grew very slowly and remained 
short; while those in the loam came up last, grew 
slowly at first and then rapidly, becoming taller 





The development of seeds. planted in the different kinds of soil 
in the lamp chimneys. FrtiYn photograph taken twenty- 
one days after the seeds were planted. 

and healthier-looking plants than those in the other 
two soils. The picture was taken twenty-one days 
after the seeds were planted. 





CAPILLARY ATTRACTION. 


97 


The plants had long, thin roots, covered with 
tiny hair rootlets. I could see them distinctly 
through the glass, especially in the clay soil. 

CAPILLARY ATTRACTION. 

As I watched the water rise in the soil inside the 
chimneys, I asked myself what made it rise. “ Oh, 
that is easy,” you may say. “ The soil sucks the 
water up like *a sponge.” That may be true, but it 
does not explain anything. 

I have here a little cupful of quicksilver or 
mercury and another of water. If I put a stick into 



Glass tube in water. Glass tube in mercury. 

the mercury and one in the water, one will be per¬ 
fectly clean and dry and the other will be wet. The 
mercury does not stick to wood, but water does. 

If I take a glass tube instead of the stick the 

result will be the same. If I should take a gold ring 
8 











98 


HAROLD'S QUESTS, 


or a gold pen, and put it into the mercury, some of 
the mercury would at once stick to the gold, and 

so well that it would be 
impossible to rub it oil*. 
We say that mercury ad¬ 
heres to gold, but does 
not adhere to glass and 
wood. Water adheres to 
nearly everything. We 
say there is* adhesion be¬ 
tween glass and water and 
no adhesion between glass 
and mercury. There is 
adhesion between chalk 
and the blackboard, be¬ 
tween paint and wood, 
between varnish and glass. 

showing the comparative Particles of the same 
height at which water will 

rise in tubes of different di- substance are held to- 

ameter by force of capillary gether by a force called 
attraction. . 

cohesion. We can not 

easily break a stone apart because there is much 
cohesion between the particles. Water has little 
cohesion. Cohesion means sticking together; adhe¬ 
sion, sticking to. 

The picture shows a glass tube put in mercury 
and one in water. You will see the mercury is de- 

























HOW SOIL IS MADE. 


99 


pressed around the glass tube and inside of it, but 
the water has climbed up on the tube both inside and 
out. Now the finer the tube, the higher the water 
will climb, as you see in the picture of the three tubes. 

It seems that the little particles of water brace 
each other up inside of the tube. This tendency 
which some liquids have to climb up in small tubes 
is called cajp-ill-ary attraction (cajpillus means hair). 
Long, fine tubes are called capillary tubes. 

If one end of a towel is laid in water, the whole 
towel will become wet by and by, because the threads 
of the cloth act like little tubes. So the spaces 
between the particles of soil are like fine tubes, 
and the closer the soil is packed together the smaller 
these air spaces will be, and the faster the moisture 
will rise to the top and evaporate. If you dig down 
a foot in a plowed field and then in a hard roadway, 
at which place will the soil be dryer ? 

HOW SOIL IS MADE. 

As has already been said, soil consists chiefly of 
sand and other decomposed rock material. We have 
traced the history of a pebble, how it was broken off 
from a large rock, pushed along and rolled over and 
over by the water. What became of the material 
rubbed off ? It was carried along by the water until 


loo 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 



Formation of talus or heap of stones 
at the foot of a disintegrating cliff. 


it was dropped or 
deposited, together 
witli other material, 
in a quiet place 
along the bank or 
on the bed of the 
stream. There are 
rivers which have 
brought down tons 
and tons of soil 
made from rocks. 

Most rocks are 
of two kinds of ma¬ 
terial. Hard, rocky 
grains which can 
not be dissolved by 
water are held to¬ 
gether by grains 
which water can 
dissolve. Our com¬ 
mon mortar is 
a good example. 
Sand, which is the 
insoluble part, is 
held together by 
lime, which is solu¬ 
ble in water. When 












HOW SOIL IS MADE. 


101 


such rocks are exposed to the air, the moisture in the 
air slowly dissolves the soluble part, and the rock falls 
to pieces. The insoluble fragments are finally worn 
down to dust in the same manner as pebbles are. 

In Mississippi and Alabama I saw soil formation 
that was very interesting. On the surface was red¬ 
dish clay. Below that was the same material a little 
darker and harder. Still deeper down was what 
looked like thin layers of red rock, but it was so 
brittle that it could easily be crumbled into small 
pieces. Under this was a layer of rock only slightly 
softened, and still farther down I found hard solid 
rock. 

Here was a good illustration of rock changing to 
soil. It showed all the stages from solid rock to per¬ 
fect soil. The rotting process, of course, goes on 
very slowly. We may see something like that in 
many parts of this country. In most stone quarries 
the upper layers of rock are much more brittle than 
those deeper down. 

In the picture you can see a heap of small stones 
lying against the cliff. How did they get there ? 
They are evidently fragments from the rocks above, 
and were broken off by some force. One day early 
in spring I stood on a large cliff, when an immense 
rock fell from the upper part of the cliff, I asked 
myself what made it fall. 


102 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


I saw the cracks and seams in the different layers 
or strata of rock. The water filled these seams, and 
during the winter froze solid. You have seen many 
instances of how water increases its bulk in freezing, 
and what force it has to break the strongest bottle 
or pail. So I think that the frost forced the rock 
slightly from its place, and when the warm spring 
rains loosened its hold, the rock tumbled over the 
edge of the cliff. 

You can also see that the rocks near the top are 
not so closely packed and the corners are rounded. 
The rocks on the face of the cliff are smooth and 
rounded too. I think the wind had something to 
do with that. Dust and sand blown against the cliff 
must wear the exposed rocks off. Often the window- 
panes on the wind side of old houses near the sea¬ 
shore are grooved and worn wavy by the sand blown 
against them. 

Thus we see that water, frost, and atmosphere are 
makers of soil. Each does a part, but water is doubt¬ 
less the most important agent in the formation of 
soil. 


EROSION. 

The soil that is made on the hills is continually 
being carried down the slopes by water and deposited 
in the valleys. I have often noticed how much the 


EROSION. 


103 


rain accomplishes in this way in railroad cuts and 
piles of dirt. The water forms little rills, and these 
rills form larger ones, cutting channels for themselves 
which become deeper year by year. At first their 



Banks of soil eroded by rains. 


banks are steep. Then they become rounded, form¬ 
ing slopes. These slopes are ever becoming longer. 
In this manner most of our hills and valleys were 
formed, 



104 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


When the stream comes down a mountain and 
flows through a country which has little rain, the 
banks always remain steep, and, instead of broad val¬ 
leys and long slopes, we have what are called canons. 

One day I put some soil into a glass jar, and then 
poured water on it and stirred it well. As soon as 
the water became quiet, soil began to settle on the 
bottom. The coarse sand and pebbles settled first, 
then the finer sand, and lastly the finest stuff, which 
formed a layer of mud on the sand. 

Some of the soil that is brought down the slopes 
is washed into creeks and rivers, and by them car¬ 
ried down toward the sea. The swifter the current 
the more soil the stream can carry. As soon as the 
current becomes less, as it always does near the mouth 
of the river, or when it flows over its banks into low¬ 
lands, it deposits some of the soil. 

The coarser parts settle first, while the finer mate¬ 
rial is carried on in the water even to the sea; or, 
when the river overflows its banks, some of the soil 
is deposited on the bottom land. Such soil is called 
silt or sediment. 

The Nile overflows its banks every year and 
deposits a thin layer of mud on the adjoining land, 
and thus it not only thoroughly soaks the soil, but 
makes it fertile. Large quantities of silt are carried 
down from our hills and slopes by the Mississippi and 


AIR IN EVERYTHING. 


105 


deposited in the Gulf at the mouth of the river. In 
this way the Gulf is being gradually filled up and the 
river made longer, more than three hundred miles, it 
is claimed. 



Delta of the Mississippi. 


AIR IN EVERYTHING. 

I will now tell you some things about the air. I 
will take a glass lamp chimney and put it down ver¬ 
tically into the water in the dish. 

The water rises in the chimney in the inside as far 
as it does on the outside. Now I’ll tie a sheet of rub¬ 
ber over one end of the chimney and again put it 
down in the water. Ah! the water does not rise in 



106 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


the inside as far as on the outside. Who can tell 
why ? There must be something in the chimney 
that keeps the water from rising. It presses the 
rubber up. 

Let us see what will happen if I make a pinhole 
in the rubber covering. Now feel the air coming out 
of the pinhole. That tells the story. There was air 
in the chimney, and as long as it could not get out 
the water could not get in. 

If I put the palm of my 
hand over the chimney, instead 
of the rubber, I can feel the 
air pressing against my hand. 

Suppose I take an empty 
glass and press the open end 
down into a basin of water. 
The water can not enter; but 
if I tip the glass far enough, so 
that the air is forced out in 
bubbles, the water enters. 

If I take an empty bottle 
and press it down into the 
water, open end upward, the 
water will force the air out in 
bubbles. 

Thus we see that water and 
air cmi not occupy the same 



Lamp chimney with sheet 
of rubber tied over one 
end, 



AIR IN EVERYTHING. 


107 


space at the same time. We notice, too, that a bottle 
which we call empty is not empty, but is full of air. 

Then I pressed the chimney closed at one end 
with rubber down as’ain into the water. I no¬ 
ticed that a lit¬ 
tle water entered 
it, and the further 
I pressed it down 
the more water 
entered. I think 
the water pressed 
the air together. 

This shows that 
air is compressi ble. 

If I raise the 
chimney so that 
the water pressure is less, the air expands again and 
pushes part of the water out. So we see that air is elas¬ 
tic. The more we compress air the more elastic it is. 

We may pump air into a bicycle tire until the air 
in it is so compressed that it makes the tire almost as 
hard as stone. Then if we let half of the air out, the 
rest of it will fill the tire, because it is elastic. 

The above experiments show that air occupies 
space; that it may be compressed until it becomes 
dense; and that when the pressure is taken off, it is 
go elastic that the particles again separate. 



Experiment showing that air and water 
can not occupy the same space. 




108 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


AIR HAS WEIGHT. 

I laid the chimney, with the rubber covering over 
one end, into a basin of water until it was full. Then 
I set it up, taking care that the open end remained 



Bent tube, one arm longer than the other, forming a siphon 
that empties glass A into glass B. 

under water. How the water was up to the rubber in 
the chimney, six inches higher than it was in the 
basin. What kept the water up in the chimney ? 













AIR HAS WEIGHT. 


109 


As soon as I made a pinhole in the rubber, the 
water slowly fell in the chimney until it was no 



B 


A 



Bent tube with equal arms. Water does not flow from one 
glass to the other. 

higher inside than out. So I think that at first there 
was no air in the chimney pressing down on the 
water, but that there was air pressing on the water in 
the basin, and this pressure of the air kept the water 
up in the chimney, where there was no pressure. 

The siphon is another illustration of air pressure. 
As you see in the picture, the arm outside of the glass 
is lower than the water in the glass. Now, if the air is 
sucked out of the tube, the water will flow through 
the siphon until the glass is empty. What makes 
the water flow over the bend on the siphon ? I think 









110 


HAROLD'S QUESTS. 



tlie water in the long arm, being heavier than that 
in the short arm, falls out of the tube. As it falls 
it creates a vacuum in the highest part. The air 
pressure in glass A forces the water up to fill the 

vacuum, and thus 
the flow is con¬ 
tinued. If the 
outer arm is raised 
to the level of the 
water, the weight 
of the water in 
both arms is equal 
and there is no 
flow either way. 
But if the arm is 
raised higher, the 
water will flow 
from B to A. 

Can you empty 
a tub or a barrel 
with a rubber tube 
in this way ? 

Then I took a 
glass tube four 

feet long, put a 

Water, standing four feet high in a i 1 . 1 1 + 

tube of that length, balanced by 

the pressure of the atmosphere. ly in one end, and 











AIR HAS WEIGHT. 


Ill 


poured it full of water. Placing my thumb on the 
open end to keep the water in and the air out, I 
inverted the tube in the basin of water. The water 
stood four feet high. This showed me that the 
pressure of the air on the water in the basin was 
enough to support a column of water four feet high. 
The least bit of air let 
in at the top would 
make the water drop 
in the tube. 

Then I took a rub¬ 
ber cork which just 
fitted into a tube and 
forced a long straight 
wire through the cen¬ 
ter of it, and bent the 
end a little so that it 
would not pull out of 
the cork. I put the 
wire through the tube, 
and setting the lower 
end of the tube in the water, I pulled the cork up in 
the tube by means of the wire. As the rubber cork 
lifted the air out of the tube, the water rose in it. 
If my tube had been long enough, how high do you 
think the water would have risen in it ? 

It would have risen until the weight of the water 



Air lifted out of a tube is replaced 
by water. 




112 HAROLD’S QUESTS. 

in the tube was equal to the air pressure. It has 
been found that water will rise about thirty-three 
feet in pump tubes. 

There are two valves, often called “ suckers,” in a 
pump tube. When the piston is lifted, the valve in it 
is closed by air pressing upon it from above. A 

vacuum is formed below it, and as it moves up the 

water rushes up from below through the second valve 
to fill the vacuum. Then when the piston is lowered, 

the lower valve 
closes and the 

water above it 

passes up through 
the valve in the 
piston. 

When the pis¬ 
ton is raised again, 
the water above is 
lifted with it, and 
again a vacuum is 
formed below as 
before. 

Next, I took a 
tube, three feet 
long and sealed at 
one end, and in- 
Pump, showing action of valves. stead of water I 

























AIR HAS WEIGHT. 


113 



used mercury, as 
you see in the 
picture. I found 
that the mercury 
would stand in the 
tube only thirty 
inches above the 
mercury in the 
cup, leaving an 
empty space or 
vacuum of six 
inches at the top 
of the tube. 

Then 1 weighed 
the mercury in the 
tube, and found 
it to be three 
and three fourths 
ounces. Now, the 
opening in the tube 
was ecpial to one 
eighth of an inch 
square. A square 
inch is sixty-four times as large as that. A column 
of mercury one inch square and thirty inches high, 
then, would weigh sixty-four times three and three 
fourths ounces, which equals two hundred and forty 


The height at which a column of mer¬ 
cury balances the pressure of the 
atmosphere. 















114 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


ounces, or fifteen pounds. Therefore the pressure 
of the air must be equal to fifteen pounds on every 
square inch of surface. If the air had no weight, it 
would have no pressure. 

Naturalists have tried this experiment on moun¬ 
tains, and found that the mercury would not rise 
thirty inches. The higher the mountain, the lower 
the column of mercury, and therefore the less the air 
pressure. 

How may this difference be explained ? If we 
pile a number of books one on top of the other and 
wish to lift the lowest book, we have to lift not only 
its own weight, but the weight of all those above it. 
So it is with the air. The lowest stratum has all the 
air above it resting upon it. Then, too, since air is 
compressible and elastic, there is more air to the cubic 
foot in the valley than on the mountain. 

THE ATMOSPHERE. 

When we speak of the air as a w r hole, we say the 
atmosphere. The atmosphere is a great ocean of air 
all around the earth. It is probably not more than 
fifty miles deep. We live in the bottom of this ocean. 
We are not able to live comfortably more than about 
two miles above sea level, as the air becomes too rare. 

By making many experiments with the mercury 


THE ATMOSPHERE. 


115 


tube, naturalists found out that in ascending moun¬ 
tains the mercury falls one inch for every eight hun¬ 
dred seventy-five feet ascent. Of course, if the mer¬ 
cury stood only twenty-nine inches in the tube, the 
air pressure would be only twenty-nine thirtieths of 
fifteen pounds, or fourteen and a half pounds. Now, 
if we were on a mountain and found that the mer¬ 
cury stood twenty inches high in the tube, we would 
know that we were ten times eight hundred seventy- 
five feet above the sea level and that the air pressure 
was only two thirds of fifteen pounds. 

By this method scientists have been able to find 
the height of different mountains. It is also found 
by experiment that the air-pressure at the same place 
is not the same on different days. On a fair day the 
mercury stands higher than it does on a foul day. 
Sometimes the air is so light that the smoke will fall 
instead of rise. This fact enables us to tell by means 
of the mercury tube what kind of weather we shall 
have a day or so in advance. 

When this cup of mercury with its tube is fas¬ 
tened to a board on which the scale of inches is 
marked, it is called a barometer. Travelers now use 
a barometer made in the shape of a large watch or 
small clock. A spring takes the place of the mer¬ 
cury. It is much more convenient than the mercury 
barometer. 


116 


HAROLD'S QUESTS. 


MATTER. 

Everything that we can hear, or see, or taste, or 
smell, or touch is matter. The rocks are matter; the 
softest sound is matter; the most delicious perfume is 
matter; our bodies are matter, and we are touched on 
all sides by matter, which we perceive by our senses. 

Matter has weight. Scientists have made experi¬ 
ments, and by means of them are able to tell us the 
weight of the sun, or of a mouthful of air. 

Matter can be divided. Every boy knows that he 
can cut his apple in two and give his sister half of it, 
if he wants to do so. He can cut his half again and 
then the quarter, then the eighth, and so on, until the 
pieces are so small that the sharpest knife will not 
cut them again. If you want to be a scientist you 
must imagine each of the smallest pieces of the apple 
still farther divided until it is so small that no smaller 
piece of apple could exist. 

Red ink is made from finely powdered coloring 
matter. If one grain of this powder is thrown into a 
cup of water it will color the whole of it. The grain 
must be very finely divided in order to distribute 
itself through so much water. 

A drop of some of the perfumes will scent the 
whole house for days. 


SOUND. 


117 


The smallest bit of matter that can exist by itself 
is called a molecule {mole, mass ; and cule , little), 
which means a little mass. 

We know of matter in three forms. A piece of 
stone, or of bread, or of candy is matter in solid form. 
Water, oil, and the like, are matter in liquid form. 
Air, lighting-gas, and the like, are matter in gaseous 
form. Liquids and gases are also known as fluids. 

Solids, generally speaking, do not easily change 
their shape, but liquids take the shape of the vessel 
that contains them. In gases the molecules separate 
from each other, so that a single cubic foot of air 
would fill a whole room if there were no other air in 
the room. 


SOUND. 

It was now late in the fall; the days had short¬ 
ened considerably, and the wind had become chilly, 
even cold. My little friends, Willie and Tom, came 
to visit me often. They also brought with them Tom’s 
little sister Amy. As these children had lived out of 
doors most of their lives and had sharp eyes, they 
were always sure to ask many questions. 

One frosty morning they made me a call, and, as 
soon as they were seated, Willie began : “ This morn¬ 
ing I heard the large bell in the church as I never 


118 


HAROLD'S QUESTS. 



heard it before. The sound came to my ears in waves, 
as it seemed to me. When the man stopped ringing 
it the tone was like this, -ng-ng-ng-g-g. What is 
it that comes to my ears ? What is sound ? Is the 


Vibrations of the air, caused by ringing a bell, as they would 
appear if they were made visible. 

sound that I hear a part of the hell, or is it a part of 
the clapper ? It seems to me it can be neither, for 
then they would soon wear out.” 

Might there not be something in the bell which is 
given out when the clapper makes it vibrate, just 
as perfume is given out by flowers? We read about 
perfumes which have for over two thousand years 








SOUND. 


119 


given out their odor and, so far as can be noticed, 
do not become less. If this is true of perfumes, 
may it not be true of bells ? However, I do not 
believe such is the true explanation. I think the 
bell when struck trembles or vibrates and makes 
the air too vibrate in such a way that it produces 
impressions upon the ear which we call sound. 

Let me illustrate my idea of how sound is pro¬ 
duced. Here is a basin of water. Notice the effect 
of letting drops fall upon it. Little waves move out 
in circles to the edge of the basin. 

Perhaps you remember that when you throw a 
stone into a pond the wave circles move outward till 
they reach the shore. As the stone strikes the pond 
it pushes the water aside, forming a wave. When 
the stone sinks, the water rolls back, and thus 
begins to move up and down starting the wave 
motion. 

“ I think I know now,” interrupted Tom. “ The 
bell makes waves in the air, and when these waves 
strike our ears we call them sound.” 

That was a bright answer, Tom, and quite correct 
too. But in the pond, as the wave moves toward the 
shore, it makes the w T ater bob up and down. This 
cannot be the case in air. 

Have you ever seen a long freight train start 
up ? 


120 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


When the engine gives a jerk it hitches up the 
first car, and that car the second, and so on to the last 
car. The jerk or sudden pull of the engine runs 
quickly along the whole line of cars. Each car is 
jerked a little toward the engine, and then it springs 
back again as far as the coupling will permit. 

You must think of the air as being made up of 
very small elastic balls, so small that they can never 
be seen. When the big hammer strikes the bell rim 
it makes it vibrate. The rim strikes against the little 
air balls all around the bell, and these air balls strike 
against other air balls near them, and bound back like 
the freight cars I spoke of. 

In this way the vibration is carried along through 
the air more and more slowly until its force is used 
up. The air balls move in the same direction in 
which the wave moves, and not perpendicular to it as 
the water particles do, so that instead of having high 
and low points, the air is crowded together at some 
points and farther apart at others; or, as we would 
say in book language, is condensed in some places and 
rarefied in others, as the picture shows. 

If we suspend a little alarm clock in a bell jar and 
then pump, the air out as far as it is possible, we can¬ 
not hear the alarm when it goes off. If we allow a 
little air to rush into the vacuum we can hear the 
alarm faintly. The more air we let in the more dis- 


Velocity of sound. 121 

tinct the sound will be. This shows that sound will 
not pass through a vacuum. Scientists believe that 
the moon has no atmosphere. If that is true there is 
no sound there—nothing but eternal silence. 

“ What is a vacuum ? ” inquired Amy. 

A vacuum is a place where there is no liquid, 
gaseous, or solid matter, not even air. 


VELOCITY OF SOUND. 

“ Last summer Tom and I saw a man chopping 
wood,” said Amy. “ He was quite a distance from 
us; we counted three from the time we saw the 
ax strike the log until we heard the sound.” 

“ When the whistle blew at noon yesterday,” add¬ 
ed Willie, “ I saw the steam a few seconds before I 
heard the sound.” 

You have certainly made good use of your eyes 
and of your minds too. If you know how fast you 
count, you can in that way get an idea of how fast 
sound travels. It has been found that sound travels 
about eleven hundred feet a second. 

In the last thunderstorm I counted ten between a 
flash of lightning and the thunder. If I counted two 
a second, how far away was the lightning ? 

“ Once when we were out swimming,” said Willie, 
“ my friend slapped the water with his hand. 1 was 


122 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


a little distance away from him, and put one ear down 
in the water and one above water. When he struck 
the water I heard two sounds, one after the other; 
the ear under water heard the sound first, and it seemed 
to be louder than the sound heard by the other ear.” 

Here is a pole twelve feet long. I will lay my 
watch on this end of it, and you put your ear to the 
other end. Can you hear the watch tick, Amy ? 

“ Oh, yes, very well; but I can’t hear it if I don’t 
put my ear to the pole.” 

What does all this teach you, Tom ? 

“ It teaches me that sound travels better in wood 
than in air. It travels well in water and iron, too. 
Hot long ago I put my ear to the rails, and heard the 
sound of the train when it was so far off that I could 
not hear it in the air.” 

QUALITY AND PITCH. 

How do we know a voice ? 

Tom and Willie, you may go out into the other 
room and talk with each other. 

Amy, can you tell which is Tom’s voice ? 

“ Oh, yes, very well.” 

How do you know it from Willie’s voice ? 

“ I think it is because Tom does not talk so loud as 
Willie.” 


VIBRATION OF STRINGS. 


123 


Yes, that is part of it; but is there not another 
difference ? Listen. 

“ I think Willie’s voice is lower; Tom talks in a 
high key.” 

Yes, that is true. Can you hear other differences ? 

Now come in, boys. Amy can tell which of 
you is talking if she cannot see you, she says. Tom’s 
voice is in a higher key, but not so loud as Willie’s. 
Can you think of any other differences ? 

“ I am sure there are some, but I don’t know what 
they are,” said Willie. “ Tom and I each have a 
violin. We may tune the violins just alike, and yet 
I can tell which is mine. I know it by the kind of 
tone.” 

That is right, Willie. This difference in kind of 
tone we call “ timbre,” or quality of tone. In violins 
it is the kind of wood and the form of the instrument 
that make the difference in the sound. It is claimed 
that the older a good violin is, the better is the 
quality of its tone. 


VIBRATION OF STRINGS. 

“ I have an JEolian harp qt home. I made it 
myself. When the wind blows, I open the window 
and set the harp under it. The wind plays on it 
beautifully. The music is soft and sweet.” 


124 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


How did you make your harp, Willie ? 

“ I took a board two and a half feet long and six 
inches wide. Hear one end I put ten small nails, and 
at the other end ten screw eyes for the strings. I 
made the strings of good silk thread, well waxed. 
The first string was a single strand, the second dou¬ 
ble, the third triple, and so on; each had one more 
strand than the one before it; the last one was made 
of ten strands.” 

Why do you have strings of different weights ? 

“ So that there will be different tones. The thick 
strings produce lower tones. I can also make a high¬ 
er tone by pulling the string tighter. The more the 
string is stretched, the higher the tone will be. I 
learned that from my violin. I put two narrow 
pieces of wood under the strings crosswise and 



iEolian harp. 


pushed them near the ends of the board, so as to 
stretch the strings. I believe they call these pieces 
bridges.” 

That is well described, Willie. 
















VIBRATION OF STRINGS. 


125 


Now let me drive a tack into tlie table, and fasten 
one end of this thin wire to the tack, and the other to 
a tin pail into which I’ll put a half-pound weight, so 
as to stretch the wire across the table. In order to 



Wire vibrating. 


raise the wire from the table, I shall put bridges near 
each end. Now pull or pluck the wire ; notice what 
happens. 

“ 1 see the wire move up and down; it moves 
farthest in the middle.” 

I will now double the weight in the pail and pluck 
the wire. 

“ The tone is higher,” piped out Tom. 

“ Yes, and the wire moves quicker.” 

Say “vibrates” instead of “ moves,” Amy. Now 






















126 


HAROLD'S QUESTS. 


I’ll put a third bridge under the middle and pluck 
half the wire. 

“ Oh, see how rapidly the wire vibrates! ” shouted 
Tom and Amy together. 

“ The tighter the wire,” put in Willie, “ the faster 
it vibrates, and the shorter the wire the faster it 
vibrates. The faster the wire vibrates, the higher the 

_b _ _ _ 

" a 


Vibrating cord. a, cord at rest; b, line taken by cord in 
vibrating; a to b, amplitude of vibration. 

tone, and the harder you pluck the wire, the louder 
the tone.” 

You can learn many interesting things from the 
strings of your harp. Make what is called a “ rider ” 
by folding a piece of paper into a strip a quarter of an 
inch wide and then creasing it in the shape of the let¬ 
ter Y. The rider may be hung on any of the strings 
and at different places. The effect will surprise you. 

“ Our piano,” remarked Amy, “ has long thick 
wires for the low keys, and short thin wires for the 
high keys, blow I understand why this is so.” 

To this Willie added: “I pulled some of the reeds 
out of our organ and noticed that those for the low 






VIBRATION OF STRINGS. 


127 


keys were about two* inches long, a quarter in width, 
and as thick as a knife blade, while the one for the 
highest key was only half an inch long, a sixteenth in 
width, and as thin as paper.” 

“ Last spring,” said Tom, “ I made a whistle from 
a willow twig. I noticed when I pushed the plug in 
it made the tone higher, and when I pulled it out it 
was lower.” 

Yes, the shorter the column of vibrating air the 
higher the pitch; that is, if the diameter of the 
column remains the same. But, as in the case of 
strings, the greater the diameter, the lower the pitch. 
You can find this out by whistling in different 
keys. When does the wind whistle round the cor¬ 
ner of the house in a high key ? Is it w T hen it 
blows hard ? 

Organ pipes are constructed on the same principle 
as the willow wdnstle. The air from the bellows en¬ 
ters the “ moutli-hole ” and makes the column of air 
in the pipe vibrate. The longer or the larger the 
pipe, the less the number of vibrations per second, 
and hence the lower the tone. Organ pipes are often 
cylindrical. 

Isn’t it wonderful! Think of the many kinds of 
instruments, and no two produce tones exactly alike ! 
We can listen to a band of thirty or more and dis¬ 
tinguish the tones of all the different instruments. 


128 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 



A, bellows for air-force; B, receiver or reservoir, from which 
air is supplied to pipes C C C C C through the sounding- 
board D, by valves E E E into mouthpieces F F E, passing 
bridge G that extends nearly across pipe, leaving narrow 
opening through which the current of air rushes, pressing 
against elastic metal tongue H , causing it to vibrate rapidly, 
and thus producing the sound-waves that pass out at the top 
of the pipe in regular modulations. Or, if the pipe is closed 
at top, these waves are reflected back in the same geometric 
lines to escape at the opening in which the metal tongue 
vibrates. 

































































































THE EAR, 


129 


There are the notes of so many birds, animals, and 
the hundreds of insects, and the quality, force, and 
pitch of all are produced by changes in the vibrations 
of the air. 

“ That’s more than I can imagine,” said Tom. 

There is something that is still more wonderful; 
and that is the ear, which is so made that it can dis¬ 
tinguish all the delicate variations. 

“ Oh, tell us about the ear,” exclaimed all three. 

THE EAR. 

I will begin by telling you that you probably 
never saw an ear. You have seen the external ear; 
but that is only the entry—we might say, the part 
which gathers up the vibrations. Some animals do 
not have this part of the ear. 

I will show you a picture that will help you to get 
the correct idea of the true ear. It would be better 
if you could see an ear. When I studied the ear, I 
obtained a hog’s head at the market to dissect both the 
ear and the eye. I took a sharp chisel, and with it 
carefully cut away the bone in which the ear is situ¬ 
ated, bit by bit. It was an easy task, and I saw every 
part of the ear. 

The external ear is connected with the true ear 

by a passage into the bone of the head about an inch 
10 


130 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


long. Its inner end is closed by a thin elastic skin 
or membrane, which is stretched across it like the 
membrane of a drum. There is no doorway through 
this. Inside of this membrane, in what is called the 

middle ear, are 
three small bones, 
named, from their 
shape, hammer, 
anvil, and stirrup. 
The hammer han¬ 
dle lies against the 
drum of the ear, 
and the head is 
attached to the 
anvil bone. The 
stirrup bone is 
very small and is 
fastened to the 
anvil so that the 
stirrup end is in 
front of a small 
oval opening or 
window which 
leads into the inner ear. There is also a tiny tube 
from the middle ear to the throat. 

The third part or inner ear has a small chamber 
about the size of a pea, called the vestibule. From 



The human ear. A, external ear; B, 
passage into the inner ear; C , ear 
drum ; D, hammer; E, anvil; F , stir¬ 
rup ; G, handle of hammer; H, small 
oval opening into the inner ear; K, 
vestibule; L L L, bony passages; 
Jf, cochlea; N, nerve to brain. 


THE EAR. 


131 


this are round openings into three bony canals in the 
shape of a half circle. In front of these is another 
opening into a snail-shaped, bony spiral, the cochlea. 
On the inner wall of the cochlea is spread out the 
nerve of hearing. The internal parts of the ear con¬ 
tain a watery liquid. 

The sound vibrations enter the external ear, pass 
through the drum and the three small bones, one 
after the other, into the vestibule and through the 
water, and then they are taken up in the cochlea by 
the nerves of hearing, which report them to the brain. 
Thus sound passes through gas, solid and liquid, the 
three forms of matter, before it reaches the nerves of 
hearing. 

“ It seems to me,” thoughtfully remarked Willie, 
“ the brain has the most wonderful part to do, as the 
sound waves are still vibrations when they reach the 
nerves.” 

True, one wonder follows another, and each leads 
to another still more surprising. But we must leave 
the study of the ear here. I wish, however, to say 
that the ear should be tenderly treated. A blow on 
the ear has often produced serious effects. We 
should never clean the ear with a pin or with any 
other hard point without first carefully winding the 
point with cotton. The wax must not be left in 
until it has been hardened by dust, as it will affect 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


132 

the hearing. Smoke and cold air breathed in through 
the mouth irritate the tube leading to the middle ear 
and thus often injure the hearing. 

I may also add that the ear is one of the avenues 
by which the mind gets knowledge. It is just as 
important to have a large number of sounds stored 
in the memory as it is for the merchant to have a 
full line of goods on his shelves in order to serve 
his customers. There are the many voices of Na¬ 
ture and the variations of musical tones, to say noth¬ 
ing of human voices, no two of which are exactly 
alike. How many human voices are you able to dis¬ 
tinguish ? Make a test among your friends. 

“ What is it that makes the voice ? ” inquired 
Tom. 

The voice may be called a wind instrument, be¬ 
cause it is air that produces it. It works in the same 
manner as the organ, the harmonica, or the Jew’s- 
harp. 

The upper part of the windpipe forms a cylindri¬ 
cal box which you can feel with the fingers. It is 
often called Adam’s apple’ but its proper name is 
larynx. Across the top of it are stretched two elastic 
membranes, a half circle in shape, so that at one side 
their edges touch, and at the other they are slightly 
separated, thus forming a narrow V-shaped slit. When 
we wish to speak, we tighten these vocal cords, as 


THE EAR. 


133 


they are improperly called—vocal membranes would 
be a better name—and force air through them to make 
them vibrate, which gives 
the tone. By putting the 
fingers on the larynx you 
can feel the vibrations and 
the tension of the 
tube when chang¬ 
ing from a low 
to a high tone. 

You can find out for yourself 
what effect the shape of the 
mouth has on the tone by 
changing the position of the 
lips, tongue, and lower jaw. 

Would there be any sound, 
boys, if there were no ears ? 

“ There would be no one 
to hear it,” Amy replied. 

“ Niagara Falls,” observed 

Willie, “roared just as loud before there were any 
ears to hear them as they do now.” 

Before answering the question I have put to you, 
we must decide on the definition of sound. Is sound 
a certain vibration of the air ? If so, there has been 
sound as long as there have been sound-producing 
bodies. But if we say sound is the impression of the 



Organs of speech. A, epi¬ 
glottis ; B, larynx; C, elas¬ 
tic membranes; D, wind¬ 
pipe ; C G , separate figure 
of elastic membrane. 








134 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


air vibrations on the brain, after they have been 
passed through the ear, then the vibrations are only a 
condition of sound. 

“ Then there would be no sound except in 
brains,” interjected Willie. 

You may take your choice of definitions and an¬ 
swer the question accordingly. I want to give you a 
few other questions to think about. Of what use is 
the outside part of the ear ? Why do some animals, 
like the mule, have large ears, and others, like the 
bird, small ones ? How can we tell from what direc¬ 
tion the sound comes ? Can a grown person tell bet¬ 
ter than a child ? Why ? Do sound vibrations move 
in straight lines ? When the bell rings, stand so that 
the house is between you and the bell. How is an 
echo produced ? 


HEAT. 

You say you made some experiments yesterday, 
boys. Will you tell us about them ? 

“ Tom took a red-hot coal out of the stove,” Amy 
replied. “ I put my hands all around it and felt the 
heat. I felt it below the coal, too.” 

To this Tom added : “We found that the farther 
from the coal we held our hands, the less heat we 
felt.” 


CONDUCTION. 


135 


“ That’s because the farther away, the more space 
the heat must warm,” put in Willie. “Yes,” Tom 
continued, “ and when I put a piece of cardboard be¬ 
tween the coal and my face, I did not feel the heat. 
That shows that the heat must travel in straight lines 
or it would go around the board.” 

Good; you did well, Tom and Amy. I can see 
by Willie’s face that he, too, has something to tell us. 

CONDUCTION. 

“ I have often noticed that our iron griddle-holder 
gets much hotter than the one with the wooden handle. 
So I got a stick just the size of our iron poker and 
put one end of the poker and of the stick in the fire. 
In ten minutes the iron poker was so hot at the 
other end that I could hardly touch it, hut I could 
take hold of the wooden one a foot from the fire. 
I concluded that heat does not pass through wood as 
well as it does through iron. 

“ Then I went to the tinsmith and got three wires, 
each twelve inches long—one iron, another brass, and 
the third copper. They were all of the same thick¬ 
ness. I laid them on top of a tin pail so that one end 
of each was in the flame of a lamp and the other 
ends were separated. The copper heated through 
first, and then the brass. 


136 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


“ With a bit of cobbler’s wax I stuck two mar¬ 
bles on each wire, one six inches from the flame, the 
other twelve inches. The marbles which were nearer 
to the flame fell off; the one on the copper in one 



Experiment in conduction. 

minute, that on the brass in two minutes, and the one 
on the iron wire in a little over six minutes. The 
marbles twelve inches from the flame fell off—from 
the copper in something over two minutes; from the 
brass in a little over four minutes ; and from the iron 
in twelve minutes. So I concluded that heat moves 
twice as fast in brass as it does in iron, and six times 
as fast in copper as in iron, I think some heat was 
lost from the iron, especially by the time it reached 
the second ball.” 

You are a genius, Willie. Your conclusions 
are almost the same as those of the great scientists. 

When heat passes through the air from a hot 








CONDUCTION. 137 

object, we say it radiates from the object, and when 
it passes through a solid from particle to particle we 
say it is conducted by the copper, brass, or whatever 
the solid is. The things that conduct the heat are 
conductors. A thing which conducts heat rapidly we 
call a good conductor; one which conducts heat 
slowly, a poor conductor. 

“ Is it right to say that cloth is a conductor ? ” in¬ 
quired Tom. 

Yes, and different kinds of cloth have different 
rates of conduction. I will tell you about some in¬ 
teresting experiments that I have made. I cut ice 
into inch-cubes and then tied them into patches of 
different kinds of cloth. I did this in the cold 
air, in order that they should not begin to melt 
until all were ready. Then I hung them in a warm 
room so that they were separated from each other and 
from the wall. I noticed their rate of melting. I will 
not give you much of the results, for it will be more 
valuable to you to make the experiment yourselves. 
Only this, the ice in the linen melted first, in the 
cotton next, and in the woolen last; and dark colors 
are better conductors than light ones. 

I also laid pieces of different kinds of cloth on 
the snow in the sunshine and observed the effect of 
the sun on the snow under each piece. The results 
were the same as those in the previous experiment. 


138 


HAROLDS QUESTS. 


These tests teach us that we should wear light 
clothes in summer, and linen or cotton rather than 
woolen. In regions where cold winds are liable to 
come up quickly, it is well to wear, even in the 
warmest weather, a thin woolen garment next to the 
skin, to prevent chilling. 


CONVECTION. 

I will now show you something else. I’ll set 
this panful of water over the flame of the lamp and 
throw a little fine sawdust in the water. Now, tell 
what you see. 

The boys were polite, and as Amy was a girl and 
the youngest, too, they looked at her to see if she did 
not want the first chance to speak. You can see that 
she had made good use of her eyes from the follow¬ 
ing answer: 

“ I see the sawdust in the water just over the 
flame move upward a little, then toward the sides of 
the pan and down again. Now the sawdust comes 
up to the top before it goes down again. I think it’s 
getting hotter.” 

She added : “ I think the sawdust shows which way 
the water moves. When the water over the flame of 
the lamp gets warm, it begins to rise and move in 
almost a circle, but I cannot tell why it does so.” 


CONNECTION. 


139 


“ I tliink I can tell why,” said Willie, timidly. 
“ W lien water becomes warm it gets lighter, and then 
the cold water pushes it up, as it does an orange 
when you push it down in water. We learned that 



last year. The cold water nearest the flame pushes 
the warm up, itself becomes warm, and is in turn 
crowded up. In this way the water in the pan begins 
to move in a circuit.” 

Your conclusion is correct, Willie. This way 
of transferring heat is called convection. 

Gases and liquids are best heated by convection. 






140 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


Liquids can be heated by conduction by applying heat 
at the top, but it is a slow process. The illustration 
of the test tube shows the water boiling at the top, 


but still cold at the 



Test tube containing water boiling at the top but cold at the 
bottom. 


are warmed at all. Of course the water in the torrid 
zone is warmer than that in the frigid zone, and is 
therefore forced from its place by the colder water, 
thus producing currents. These currents aid in 
























CONVECTION. 


141 


wanning tlie cold regions, but the ocean, even in the 
torrid zone, is not warm far below the surface. 
The oceans at a depth of about three miles are at the 
freezing temperature. 

This room is heated by a furnace. You see if 
I hold this paper over the register, it flutters as if the 
wind blew up through the register. When I hold it 
near the floor you may see that a current of air 
moves toward the register. This proves that the air 
circulates in the room, and thus warms all parts 
nearly alike. 

Tom, you say your room is warmed by a stove. 
Hold a strip of paper in different parts of the room 
and see if you can find currents. Hang a thermom¬ 
eter near the ceiling and one near the floor, and tell 
us what they teach you; also, hold a strip of paper 
near the top and bottom of an open doorway between 
a warm and a cold room. Perhaps you can discover 
some currents that will interest you. 

The fact that heated air and water are lighter 
than cold and therefore rise, accounts for winds and 
ocean currents. As soon as the air is unequally 
heated in different regions, a current sets in from the 
colder place toward' the warmer, thus creating a wind. 
Mountains have their influence in changing the direc¬ 
tion of the wind, and so does the rotation of the earth 
on its axis. 


142 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


The atmosphere receives little heat from the rays 
of the sun as they pass through it to the earth. It is 
heated chiefly by reflection and radiation. Those 
who have ascended in balloons to a distance of from 
three to four miles above the surface have found the 
air so cold that they could scarcely keep from freez¬ 
ing even in heavy clothing. 

When the rays of the sun strike the earth, part 
of the heat produced is reflected or thrown back, 
but by far the greater part warms the land and 
water, and these in turn radiate the heat to warm the 
atmosphere. 


EXPANSION. 

“ I tried something else,” said Willie. “ I went 
to the tinsmith and had him punch a hole, just large 
enough to fit an iron rod that I had, in a piece of tin. 
Then I heated the rod and tried to put it in the hole, 
but it was too large now; heat made it swell up, if 
that is the right word.” 

We say heat “ expanded” the iron. 

“ Then I heated the rod and measured its exact 
length by setting up two flatirons, one against each 
end. After cooling the rod, I laid it again between 
the irons, and found that it was shorter. I concluded 
that heat expands iron both in thickness and length.” 


EXPANSION. 


143 



The expansion of an iron rod by heat. 


“ I saw a blacksmith heat a wagon tire the other 
day,” said Tom, “ and then put it on the wheel. It 
went on easily, but after he had cooled it with water 
it was so tight 
that you could 
not knock it off 
with a hammer. 

He said if he 
should make the 
tire red-hot and fit it closely, he could make it so 
tight that it would bend the spokes, if not break 
them.” 

“ When I crossed the railroad tracks this morn¬ 
ing, I noticed the rails did not come together, and 
last summer they were against each other so closely 
that I couldn’t put a pin between them,” added 
Tom. 

The expansion of iron and steel must be taken 
into account in building bridges ; for if all the parts 
were bolted together tightly in cold weather, the heat 
of summer would expand the metal so as to break the 
fastenings. 

You can easily try other metals as Willie did the 
iron, and you will doubtless find that the best con¬ 
ductors expand the least. That will give us some¬ 
thing to talk about next year. 

I will now show you an interesting experiment. 



144 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


Each of these test tubes is fitted with a rubber cork 
through which passes a small glass tube. They are 
supported in the holes of this little board. In one is 
fresh water, in another alcohol, and in the third 
strong salt water. I have added a few drops of red 
ink to each of the liquids so that they may be more 
easily seen through the glass. 



Expansion of liquids. 


The tubes are filled; the liquids stand just at the 
upper edge of the cork. How watch the effect as I 
set them down into this pail of hot water. 

Amy, what have you noticed ? 

“ I saw the liquids rise in the tubes ; the alcohol 
rose first and highest, next the salt water, and the 
clear water rose last. That looks as though the water 
increased when heated.” 







EXPANSION. 


145 


“ That is the way a thermometer works,” inter¬ 
rupted the boys. 

You observed well, Amy ; but there is no more 
water now by weight than there was when it was 
cold. As soon as it cools, it will fall to the top of 
the cork again. A pound of cold liquid will weigh 
just a pound when heated. 

I think this is what happens when a liquid is 
heated: the heat gets in among the tiny particles 
of the liquid and pushes them farther apart; this 
makes them take 
up more space. 

“ That is why 
warm water is 
er than the 
same amount of 
cold water,” inter¬ 
rupted Willie. 

Air and other 
gases also expand 
in bulk when heat¬ 
ed. You can see, 
by filling a little 
rubber balloon in A fire-balloon made ot tissue paper. 

the cold air, measuring it around with a tape or string, 
and then taking the balloon into a warm room and 

measuring it again, that gases expand when heated. 

11 




146 


HAROLD'S QUESTS. 


“We made a balloon of thin tissue paper last 
Fourth of July,” said Tom. “ It was the shape of an 
egg with the small end cut off a little. We put a 
light wire in the opening and fastened a little ball of 
absorbing cotton to it so that it did not touch the 
paper. Then we poured alcohol on the cotton and 
touched a match to it. The flame heated the air in 
the balloon, and when it was light enough it sailed 
away. It went up very high, and as long as the cot¬ 
ton burned the balloon kept afloat. It was lots of 
fun for us all.” 



Heat expelling air from a bottle. 


Here is a bottle which has an air-tight cork into 
which a long tube is fastened. I will put the end of 
the tube under water and hold the flame of the lamp 
under the bottle. As the air in the bottle becomes 
warm, bubbles rise from the water. How as it cools, 






EXPANSION. 


147 


see tlie water rush up the tube into the bottle. It is 
half full. When the air was heated its pressure was 



greater than that of the atmosphere outside and a 
part of it was forced out. As soon as it cooled the 
greater pressure was outside and forced the water 
into the bottle. From the amount of water in the 
bottle you can see that the air in it had been ex¬ 
panded to twice its original size, and the heat forced 
half of it out. 

Mercury, melted lead—in fact, solids, gases, and 
liquids—contract as they cool, but water and a few 
other things are exceptions to this rule. You have 
often seen ice floating on water. It would not do 
that unless it were lighter than water. The follow¬ 
ing experiment was interesting and taught me some¬ 
thing : 








148 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


I inserted a rubber cork fitted with a small tube, 
in a test tube full of water until the water rose two 
inches in the small tube. Then I suspended it in a 
pail of water with a correct thermometer beside it, 
and set it out on the window sill. As the water 
cooled it sank in the tube, but only until the ther¬ 
mometer fell to 39° F. Then as the water got still 
colder it rose rapidly in the tube and ran out at 
the top just as it began to freeze. 
This showed that water was most 
dense at the temperature of 39° F. and 
expanded considerably before it be¬ 
came a solid. 

This is a wonderful and a wise ex¬ 
ception. If it were not for this the ice 
would sink as fast as it formed; our 
streams in the cold climate would freeze 
solid in winter, and it would take all 
summer to thaw them out. 

THERMOMETER. 

I must tell you how I made a ther¬ 
mometer ( thermo , heat, and meter , 
measurer). I bought a thermometer 
tube with mercury in it. Then I fast¬ 
ened a strip of card to the tube so that 












THERMOMETER. 


149 


marks could be made on it. 
Next I put the bulb in a cup 
of water which I set out on 
the window sill on a cold day. 
The cold contracted the mercury 
so that it fell in the tube. Just 
as the ice was beginning to form 
on the water I made a mark on 
the card at the point where the 
mercury stood. This was the 
freezing point or temperature. 
Then I placed the bulb in boil¬ 
ing water and noticed to what 
point the mercury rose and made 
a mark. This was the boiling 
point. I thought it would be a 
good idea to call the freezing 
point zero and the boiling point 
a hundred. Fahrenheit, whose 
thermometer we generally use, 
called these points 32 and 212. 
The distance on the tube be¬ 
tween the two points is the same. 
I divided the space into one hun¬ 
dred parts, and Fahrenheit di¬ 
vided his into one hundred and 
eighty parts. Five of my divi- 



Compound thermometer 
(-30° to 122 F.°). R., 
Reaumur; F., Fahren¬ 
heit ; C., centigrade. 



















150 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


eions were equal to nine of his. My thermometer is 
called a centigrade thermometer ( centum , hundred, 
and grade , step) because there are one hundred steps 
or marks from the freezing to the boiling point. 
This kind is used mostly by scientists. There is a 
third kind called Reaumur. By looking at the pic¬ 
ture you can see how the different divisions or scales 
of these three thermometers compare with each other. 
Which kind do you think the most convenient ? 

HEAT REQUIRED TO CHANGE FORM. 

I have often observed the fact that when snow or 
ice melts, the water remains ice cold until all the ice 
has disappeared. I put a pound of water at a tem¬ 
perature of 176° and a pound of chopped ice having 
a temperature of 32° F. in a two-quart fruit jar and 
gently stirred the contents until the ice was melted. 
The water in the jar was now at a temperature of 
32° F. It had lost 144° and the water from the ice 
had gained nothing in temperature; it was still at 
the freezing point. What became of that heat ? It 
certainly was not lost. 

I think it took that much heat to break up the 
ice, to change its form from a solid to a liquid. 
Everything, however cold, has some heat in itself. 
We may not be able to measure it with a tliermome- 


SOURCES OF HEAT. 


151 


ter, but it is there, invisible to us. The water that 
came from the pound of ice has 144° more of heat in 
it now than it had when it was in the form of ice. 

Then I tried the same experiment in a cool room, 
but this time I used water at a temperature of 180° F. 
or 148° above the freezing point. After the ice had 
melted the temperature of the water rose to 34°, that is 
2° above freezing. Thus I concluded that to change 
the form of a pound of ice to a liquid requires 144° F. 
and no more, and the other 4° were used in raising 
the two pounds of water together two degrees. 

There is another thing you may have seen, and 
that is that plants are often kept from freezing in a 
cold room or in the cellar by setting a tub of water 
near them. In the morning I have seen the water 
frozen over with a sheet of ice, and the tender plants 
uninjured. Doubtless, water gives out as much heat 
in freezing—that is, in changing from a liquid to a 
solid—as the ice takes in in melting. 


SOURCES OF HEAT. 

W hat sources of heat can you think of ? 
u We get heat from the sun, from wood, and from 
coal,” responded Amy. 

Tom added, “ The auger gets hot in boring holes; 
the ax too, if you sharpen it on the grindstone with- 


152 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


out water, and if we rub anything it gets hot. I read 
that they used to make fire by rubbing two sticks 
together.” 

“ Electricity makes heat, too, for they warm cars 
with it. I poured some acid in water, and it made so 
much heat that I could not hold the bottle,” said 
Willie. 

Your answers are good. The sun is the great 
source of heat. Later you will learn that even the 
heat in fuel is sunlight stored away ages ago for our 
use. The third source of heat is friction; that is, 
heat produced by rubbing or pounding. The case 
of acid and water may also be classed as friction of 
their particles. 


WHAT IS HEAT? 

“ You have not told us anything about what heat 
is,” interrupted Tom. 

That is no easy question. But I will give you 
some idea about it. You remember we concluded 
that sound is wave motion of the air. 

“ Isn’t heat also waves of the air, but of a differ¬ 
ent kind ? ” inquired Willie. 

Not exactly. I once saw an experiment in 
which a thermometer was suspended by a silk thread 
in a bell jar and the air exhausted from the jar. 


LIGHT. 


153 


When hot coals were brought near the jar, the ther¬ 
mometer at once rose, showing that heat passes 
through a vacuum, and that air is not necessary for 
the radiation of heat. 

To explain heat, light, and other forces, scientists 
suppose that something much thinner than air tills 
all space, a substance so thin that it goes through all 
objects, that is, permeates all bodies, and is very 
elastic but without weight. This imaginary fluid 
they call ether. Heat is supposed to be waves or 
vibrations of this ether. 

When a coal, for instance, gets warm its mole¬ 
cules begin to vibrate, and the warmer it gets, the 
more rapid the vibrations. These vibrations set the 
ether in the coal and all around it in motion. The 
waves move outward in all directions like sound 
waves from a bell. 


LIGHT. 

“ Oh, see here,” exclaimed Amy. “ I held this 
card across the middle of the flame of the candle and 
it made a black ring on it. The card is as white 
inside of the ring as it is outside. That looks as 
though the flame did not burn in the center.” 

I will light the tallow candle, and ask you to ob¬ 
serve what the flame does. 


154 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


“ The heat of the flame,” said Willie, “ melts the 
tallow and then burns it.” 

There is another step which you can not see. 

Here is a glass tube 
drawn to a point. I 
will hold it with the 
large end in the cen¬ 
ter of the flame and 
put a lighted match 
to the pointed end. 

“ It burns like 
gas,” spoke up Tom. 
“ I believe it is gas.” 

“ I know now,” 
continued Willie. 
“ The other step is 
changing the liquid 
to gas. Now let me 
say it all. The heat 
changes the tallow to 
liquid, then the liquid to gas, and then the gas to 
flame.” 

You have the order correct. You see the dark 
center in the flame. That, as you see, is unburned gas. 
Around and over the dark center is a cap of burn¬ 
ing gas. This cap is lined with a layer of gas only 
partly ignited ; that is, it is just beginning to burn. 








LIGHT IS REFLECTED. 


155 


LIGHT MOVES IN STRAIGHT LINES. 

“ I have just found out that light moves in 
straight lines,” said Willie. 

What is your proof ? 

“I have three cards here with a small hole ex¬ 
actly in the center of each. I set them one behind 
each other and looked through the holes at the flame. 
If any one of the cards is the least bit too high or to 
one side I can not see the flame. The holes must be 
exactly in line or the light will not come through 
them to my eye.” 

“ Oh, I always knew that. You can’t look around 
the corner of the house unless you put your head 
around it,” put in Amy, laughing. 


LIGHT IS REFLECTED. 

“ I can show you how you can see through this 
brick,” continued Willie. 

So he laid the brick on the table with a marble 
behind it, arranged books and pieces of an old mir¬ 
ror at the corners, A, B , and C, as you see in the 
picture. Then he went on to say : “ The light comes 
from the marble and strikes the glass at A , and this 
reflects it so that it strikes the glass at B , which sends 
it to C, and from C it comes to my eye. Look for 


156 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 



How to see around a brick. 

yourself, Amy, and be convinced that you can see 
round the corner of a brick, if not round that of a 
house.” 

Are you certain that the light comes from the 
marble to your eye ? Does not the light strike 
your eye first, and then pass from your eye to the 
marble ? Does the eye see objects where they really 
are ? Have you ever seen the image of a boat or 
other object in the air upside down ? 







LIGHT IS REFLECTED. 


157 


Through the paper shade which I have placed be¬ 
fore the window I made a hole half the size of a lead 
pencil. Now I’ll lay the mirror on the table so the 
sunbeam coming through the hole in the shade will 
fall on it. I’ll stir up some dust so you can see the 
beam better. Notice the direction of the reflected 
ray. Now, if one end of the mirror is raised a little, 
the direction of the reflected ray will also be changed. 



Ray of light is reflected at right angles. 


Look at the objects in the room. You can see 
them by the reflected light. If there is little light, 
the objects will reflect little and will be indistinct. 

“ Do we not see all objects, even those outdoors, 
by reflected light ? ” asked Willie. 









158 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


Yes, with a few exceptions. These are the sun, 
flames, and red-hot objects which we see by their own 
direct rays. They are called luminous bodies. 



How the light, in reflecting an object, falls on a mirror. 


“ Aren’t stars luminous bodies too ? ” inquired 
Tom. 

Yes, they are suns like our own, but they are 
so far away that they appear small to us. Venus and 
Jupiter are called the evening and morning stars, 












LIGHT IS REFLECTED. 


159 



but they are not really stars. They are planets or 
worlds like our earth. They are seen, as the moon is, 
by the light of the sun reflected by them. 

“ Don’t we see ourselves in a looking-glass by 
reflected light ? ” asked Amy. 


Distorted reflected How the light, in reflecting an object, 
image. falls on a curved surface. 

Yes, the rays of light from every part of your face 
fall on the surface of the mirror, from which they are 
reflected to your eyes. We see the image in the 








160 


X HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


direction in which the rays enter our eyes. Do you 
think there is a real image formed behind the mirror ? 
How far does it seem to be behind the mirror ? Can 
you draw lines to show how the image is formed ? 
Trees and other objects near a pond or a quiet river 
are often reflected so as to make a beautiful picture. 

When the reflecting surface is unequally curved, 
the image is often distorted. Look in a polished 
spoon or silver vase. 

LIGHT IS REFRACTED. 

Willie showed us proof that light moves in 
straight lines. Reflected rays are no exception ; they 
are rays turned from’ their course by a polished sur¬ 
face. Is there no exception ? 

Look at my pencil point under water. 



Amy. 


said 



LIGHT IS REFRACTED. 


161 


Yon are sure the pencil is not broken ; the light 
must be playing a trick with us, but we shall tind out 
its tricks. Let us put a penny in the dish and you 



A penny in an empty dish. Looking from the position occu¬ 
pied by the eye the penny can not be seen. 

put your eye a little distance from the pan, so that 
looking over the edge you can not see the penny. 
Now I will pour water in slowly. 

“ Now I can see it,” said Tom. 



A penny in a dish containing water becomes visible by the re¬ 
fraction of the rays of light. 

As you can see by the drawing, the penny has 

not changed position ; neither has the eye. The rays 

come from the penny toward the eye, and at the 
12 























162 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


point where they leave the water and enter the air 
they are bent or broken, and then in that direction 
pass into the eye. The eye sees an object in the 
direction in which the light enters it. 

A fish is not where you see it in the water. Will 
you have to aim higher or lower than where it ap¬ 
pears to be if you want to shoot it with a rifle ? 

Try the penny experiment by looking vertically 
down upon it, then more and more obliquely. At 
which position do the rays bend most ? This bend¬ 
ing of the beam of light is called refraction (broken). 

Anything through which light passes is a medium 
of light. Air is a medium of light; water is also a 
medium of light, and so is glass and any other sub¬ 
stance through which the light can pass. Such sub¬ 
stances are said to be transparent 
(. trans , through, and parent, appear¬ 
ing). Bodies through which the 
light shines, but through which we 
can not see objects are translucent 
{trans, through, and lucent, shining). 
Bodies through which the light does 
not shine are opaque (dark). 

When the medium is thin like 

air it is a rare medium. Water is 
Double-convex lens , 

and plano-convex a denser medium than air, and glass 
lens. is denser than water. The light 







LIGHT IS REFRACTED. 


163 


from the penny to the eye passed from a denser to 
a rarer medium, and the beam bent away from the 



Burning glass, showing how the rays of light shining through 
the glass concentrate upon one point which they heat suffi¬ 
ciently to ignite if the surface they fall upon is combustible. 

perpendicular. When light passes from air into 
glass or any denser medium it is bent toward the 
perpendicular. For this reason refraction is a 
very important property of light, as you will 
soon see. 

A lens is a glass usually circular in shape. The 
surfaces are planes, convex or concave. In the 
illustration you can see a double convex and a 
plano-convex. 

In the next illustration you can see a double 
convex lens, often called by boys and girls a burn¬ 
ing glass. The rays come in parallel lines against 
the lens as they enter it. They are bent toward 




164 


HAROLD'S QUESTS. 


each other, and as they pass out on the other side 
they are bent still more toward each other, and 
meet in a point which is called the focus. The 
rays only slightly warm the lens, but at the focus 
they are hot enough to set paper and even wood 
on fire. 

I have read an account of an arctic explorer who 
once had no matches with him, but who made a large 
lens out of a piece of ice, and by using it as a burn¬ 
ing glass, succeeded in getting a fire. 



A fly magnified by a lens. 


If a little bug or a fly is placed at the focus of a 
lens, it will appear much larger to one looking through 
the glass. Can you tell why ? 

There is another instance of refraction most in¬ 
teresting. It occurs when light passes through the 
corner of a glass object. A triangular prism of glass 









LIGHT IS REFRACTED. 


165 


may be used. You can make such a prism by 
having the glazier cut three pieces of glass each live 
inches long and one and a quarter inches wide, and 



two three-cornered pieces each side an inch and a 
quarter in length. They can be fastened together 
with a little cement and filled with water. The 
prism must be put in the path of the beam, so that 
the colors will fall on the white screen, as shown 
in the picture. 

“ Isn’t that beautiful! ” exclaimed Amy. “ I see 
violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red.” 

There are two shades of blue and two of yel¬ 
low; the first blue is indigo, and the second yel¬ 
low is orange. The first letters of the colors spell 
the word vibgyor • that will help you to remember 
them. 

When the beam enters the glass it is refracted, 
and as it passes out it is again refracted. Isn’t it 
wonderful that sunlight, which appears white, is 
really a mixture of seven bright colors ? The red 
part of the beam is bent least from its course; the 
orange is refracted more, the yellow still more, and 



166 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


so on, the violet being most refracted. As some 
colors are bent more from their course than others, 
they appear one above the other on the screen. This 



The prism in the path of a beam of light producing the seven 
colors on the screen. 


separation is called dispersion of light. The double 
refraction will help us to understand the cause of the 
rainbow. 

To see a rainbow you must be on the same 
side of the rain as the sun. The beam enters the 
drop, is refracted, and passes to the side of the 
drop opposite to you, where it is reflected and 
comes forward again to the lower part of the drop. 
Here it is again refracted and dispersed so that you 
see the colors. There are two refractions, one 






LIGHT IS REFRACTED. 


167 



called the primary bow. 




V 



A rainbow. In order that the two preceding diagrams may be better understood, a representation 
of the double rainbow is here presented. Two drops of water enlarged to the width of the bows 
show, as in the two preceding diagrams, the path taken by the rays of light from the sun to the 
two rainbows, and from the bows to the eyes of the spectator. 















UMBRA AND PENUMBRA. 


169 


reflection and one dispersion in forming the rain¬ 
bow. 

You will see the colors dispersed by only those 
drops which lie in the proper angle of refraction—that 
is, the light from the drop to your eye must make the 
proper angle with the light shining on the drops. 
For this reason the colors appear only in a small band, 
two degrees in width, and that band in a circle. For 
the same cause no two persons ever see the same 
bow. Often a double rainbow may be seen. The 
second rainbow is formed by the rays that fall on the 
lower part of the drops, as you can see in the figure. 
The rays are then refracted, twice reflected, and 
again refracted before they pass to the eye. As a 
part of the light passes through the drop at each 
reflection, the second rainbow is fainter than the 
primary. 

The rainbow colors may also be seen on soap 
bubbles, and when you are rubbing a moist finger 
over a window-pane. 

UMBRA AND PENUMBRA. 

“Willie and I tried an experiment last night,” 
said Tom. “We stuck an orange on a lead pencil 
and held it up between the lamp and the white wall. 
It made a round shadow on the wall, and around 


170 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


the shadow was a circle of a lighter shade. Willie 
cut a small hole in a piece of cardboard and held it 
close to the light between the flame and the orange. 



This shut off all the light of the flame except that 
which came through the hole. The shadow now was 
dark all over. Then we concluded that the flame 
was so large that, in the first experiment, some of the 
rays shone around the orange into the shadow.” 



















INTENSITY OF LIGHT. 


171 


You have the correct idea. The shadow is called 
the umbra , which means shadow. The ring less 
deeply shaded is the penumbra , which means almost 
a shadow. 


INTENSITY OF LIGHT. 

“We made another experiment,” added Willie. 
“ We cut five squares out of pasteboard; one meas¬ 
ured an inch on a side, the second two, the third 
three, the fourth four, and the fifth five inches on a 
side. Then we fixed the one-inch square up near the 



Intensity of light- 


flame, and placed the second card behind the first, 
just far enough away to be covered by the shadow 












172 HAROLD’S QUESTS. 

of the first. We placed the third in the same maimer 
behind the second, and so the fourth and the fifth. 
Next, we measured the distance that each was from 
the flame, and found that the second was twice as far 
away as the first, the third three times, the fourth 
four times, and the fifth five times as far away from 
the light as was the first. The light which shone on 
the one-inch square had to cover two times two or 
four square inches twice as far away, and three times 
three or nine square inches three times as far away, 
and so on. At five times the distance it had to cover 
twenty-five square inches. It seems to me the light 
would be only one fourth as strong two feet from 

the lamp as it 
is one foot aw^ay, 
because the same 
amount of light 
must cover four 
times as much 
space; at three 
feet it would be 
only one ninth as 
strong as at one 
foot; at four feet one sixteenth, and at five feet one 
twenty-fifth as strong, and so on.” 

That was a good experiment and you learned a 
fine lesson. A card with a hole in it placed nearest 



Simple apparatus for determining the 
comparative intensity of light. 





INVERTED IMAGE. 


173 


the lamp will make the shadows more distinct. Here 
is a very simple little thing that all of you can make. 
It shows which of two lights is the stronger, and you 
can find the point between them at which the light is 
equal. It is made of paraffin, which can be had of 
any druggist for a few cents. I cut two inch-cubes 
of paraffin with a hot knife. Then I warmed two 
faces of the cubes and stuck them together with a 
piece of thin black paper between them. When this 
is held between two lights, you can easily see which 
is the more intense. 

INVERTED IMAGE. 

“ I have a camera, and when I focus it the 
picture on the ground glass in the back is always 
upside down and right side to the left,” said Willie. 
“ How does that come ? ” 

Here is a picture which will make that clear to 
you. At the right is a dark box so that the picture 
can be seen, with a small hole or aperture in the 
front side. From a point at the top of the plant light 
is reflected in all directions, but only one ray can 
enter the aperture of the box, and that strikes the 
back at the bottom. In the same manner, a ray of 
light comes from a point at the foot of the plant and 
strikes the back near the top, crossing the other ray 
in the opening. Thus you can trace a ray from every 


174 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


point in the scene to the back of the box or camera 
where the picture is outlined. All these rays cross 
each other in the aperture, and form a cone of light 



on the outside with its apex in the opening, and an¬ 
other but much smaller cone inside of the box, be¬ 
cause the distance between the aperture and the pic¬ 
ture is much less than that between the aperture and 
the plant. 


THE .EYE. 

“Isn’t the eye still more wonderful than the 
ear ? ” inquired Willie. 

Examine the eye and then you may decide for 
yourself which is the more wonderful. If you will 
look into each other’s eyes when the light is dim, and 











THE EYE. 


175 


then when the light is strong, you will discover 
something. Amy, you and Tom look into each 
other’s eyes in this dim light. 

u I see a round dot in the center almost as 
large as a lead pencil. Next to this is a ring of 
brown, and then the 
white,” observed the 
little girl. 

“ That is what I 
see in Amy’s eyes,” 
added Tom, 44 ex¬ 
cept that there is 
blue in her eyes in¬ 
stead of brown. I 
also see long lashes 
on her lids. Those 
on the upper 
lid curve upward. 

When she opens her eyes the upper lids make folds. 

I think her eyebrows are beautifully arched.” 

After looking at each other’s eyes in strong light, 
both declared that the center, called the pupil, was 
much smaller. They believed that there was a 
circular curtain in the eye which in the strong 
bright light was drawn together so as to make the 
center or pupil smaller. 

The eye is in some respects like the dark box 



Eyeball seen from the front. (After 
Le Gros Clark.) w, white of eye; 
i, iris ; p, pupil. 






176 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


shown in the picture of the inverted tree. It is 
nearly round; that is, globose in shape. The outside 
coat is very tough and white except in front. It is 
called sclerotic ( scleros , hard, firm). 



Section of an eye looking at a pencil. (Adapted from Kirke.) 
c, c, cornea; w, white of eye; cm, ciliary muscle; a, a, aqueous 
humor; v, vitreous humor; i, i, iris; l , l, lens; r, r, retina; on, 
optic nerve; 1 , 2, pencil; 1',2' , image of pencil on the retina. 

Willie, who always wants to see everything for 
himself, had brought a calf’s eye which he obtained 
at the market. He now proceeded to dissect it, and 
explained its structure as follows. He said: 

“ The eye is round like a ball, but in front it 
bulges out a little. The front is the cornea. I will 
cut the eye crosswise. You see it is full of a clear, 
watery jelly. How look through the front half. 
See the circle where the wall is transparent. The 






THE EYE. 


m 


rest of it is opaque. Here is the lens, isn’t it a 
beauty ? In front of the lens is a small chamber 
full of a liquid like water. 

“ In this chamber just in front of the lens is the 
little curtain called the iris, on account of its 
different colors. Iris is the Greek word for the 
rainbow. This iris is bluish. A brown iris makes 
a brown eye, and a blue iris a blue eye. 

“ How we will take the back half. See the black 
lining it has. How easily it tears. I will wash it 
all off. See the nerves spread out from the center. 
This cord at the rear enters the eye through the wall, 
and then is divided into fibers, and these form a lin¬ 
ing on the inside of the eye. Here is the white 
spot where the nerves come through. 

“ I have a lens here, which I took out of another 
eye yesterday and put in alcohol. The alcohol has 
made it harder, but it is not so clear. Let me cut into 
it. There are different layers. How distinct they 
are.” 

Thank you, Willie. Here is a picture showing a 
cross-section of the eye from front to back. 

The light enters the eye at the transparent front, 
the cornea, passes through the watery humor, and as 
much as the iris will permit goes through the lens 
and through the glassy humor, and, if the eye is 

good, is focused on the black lining. This makes an 
13 


178 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


impression, which is carried to the brain by the white 
nerve. 

As the light passes through the humors and the 
lens it is refracted slightly, least by the thin humor 
and most by the lens. You see the eye is similar to 
a photographic camera. The nerve or retina takes 
the place of the sensitive plate. The image is in¬ 
verted as the tree was, but we do not see it so, as we 
have doubtless learned by experience how to inter¬ 
pret images. 

In a camera we push the lens backward or for¬ 
ward until we get a good, clear, inverted image on 
the ground glass where the plate is to be. But the 
eye must do its own focusing. The shape of the eye 
is changed by the muscles so as to make the image 
focus on the retina. It requires a little time to do 
this, as you will discover for yourself if you look at 
an object far away, and then quickly at one close to 
the eye. You will not be able at once to see the one 
near by. 

Now you may each take a book and read. IIow 
far must you hold it from, your eye to see the print 
most easily ? Let me measure. Willie, your book is 
eleven inches away from your eyes; Amy, yours is 
ten ; and Tom, yours is only six inches. You are 
short-sighted. The cornea, and perhaps the lens, of 
your eyes is so convex that the rays are brought to 


THE EYE. 


1T9 


a focus before they reach the retina. In order to 
make them focus on the retina the book must be held 
very close to the eyes. You ought to have glasses so 
that you would not strain your eyes and thus weaken 
them. You notice that Tom half closes his eyes 



Diagram showing the point at which the rays of light are brought 
to a focus. In a far-sighted eye the globe is too short, and 
in near-sighted the globe is too long. 


when he wants to look sharply. Near-sighted persons 
usually do that, and for this reason short-sightedness 
is called myopia (two Greek words meaning closed 
eyes). 

“ I have often seen old people hold objects far 
away when they wanted to see them,” said Willie. 
“ Isn’t that because the cornea or lens is too flat and 
the image is formed behind the retina ? ” 

Yes, that would be the case if the rays could pass 
through the retina; but as they can not, there is no 
image formed at all. Convex glasses will help such 
eyes to focus properly. Long-sightedness is called 
presbyopia (two Greek words meaning old-man eyes), 





180 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


because in old age the muscles get shorter and thus 
flatten the eye. It is claimed that this can be avoided 
if you practice daily looking at an object before you 
and then turn your eyes to look at one above, then 
below and back again, and so to the right and back, 
and to the left and back, and likewise in the oblique 
directions, so as to exercise all the muscles that move 
the eyeball. 

I have two objects of the same diameter. I will 
not let you see them until I have placed them directly 
opposite the window. Now, look and tell me their 
shape. 

“ They are little white disks,” responded Tom. 

“ I think they are hemispheres,” ventured Willie. 

Then I placed them so that the light fell upon 
them obliquely, and at once both concluded that one 
was a disk and the other a hemisphere. They were 
made of plaster of Paris and carefully molded, so that 
no shadows would appear on them when the light fell 
directly upon them. I think that we are not always 
able to recognize the form of objects by the sense of 
sight without the sense of touch. 

“ Would there be light if there were no eyes to 
see ? ” inquired the young scientist. 

I believe it is the mind that sees and not the eye, 
but the mind can not see without the eye. The mind 
sees not the light, but only the image which the light 


THE EYE. 


181 


makes on the retina. There must be many images 
on the retina at one time, but the mind selects the 
one it desires to attend to. We pass many objects 
daily whose images fall on the retina of our eyes, but 
we do not see the objects, or rather we do not examine 
their images, and hence we do not know anything 
about them. We must have a desire to see before we 
shall see. 

It is by means of the eye that we get a knowledge 
of color, and to a large extent, of the form of objects. 
Think, if you can, of all the shades and tints of 
green, of red, of yellow, of blue; they are nothing 
but light, more or less according to the colors re¬ 
flected. You remember the spectrum of the seven 
colors made by the sunbeam as it passed through the 
prism. The red color is a part of the sunbeam, and 
so are the green and the blue. When we see a red 
object, what do we see? Nothing more than the red 
part of light. What becomes of the rest of the 
light ? That, I think, is taken in or absorbed by the 
object. When I rub green chalk on this paper, I put 
a surface on it that will reflect the green part of the 
light only. 

“ Our teacher in drawing said that foliage is not 
pure green,” put in Tom. “ She said it is of various 
shades of color, according to the plant to which it 
belongs and the kind of light that shines upon it.” 


182 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


That is correct, but you are an investigator and 
ought to find out for yourself by drawing a leaf with 
green chalk or paint, and then laying the leaf be¬ 
side it. 

“ Can the eye be trained as well as the ear ? ” in¬ 
quired Willie, and then he proceeded to answer his 
own question. “ I know that I can distinguish tints 
much better now than I could before I began to draw 
in colors.’’ 

Some persons are unable to distinguish some of 
the colors from others. I knew a boy who could not 
tell whether an object was green or red. Such per¬ 
sons are said to be color blind. 

“ What is light ? ” asked Amy, who had been 
urged by Willie to do so. 

To answer we must go outside of the domain of 
science, for science deals only with facts, conclusions 
which can be demonstrated, but scientists can not 
keep from philosophizing; that is, reasoning and 
thinking about the facts. 

We can see some of the effects of light and heat, 
but we can not see what they are themselves. We 
begin to reason about them and try to make up an ex¬ 
planation that may fit the facts. Such an explanation 
is called a theory. So we have a theory of sound. 
It is supposed to be a wave motion of air or other 
substances through which it passes. Heat is a wave 


MAGNETISM. 


183 


motion, not of air, bnt of something that is much 
thinner and without weight—ether. Heat waves are 
much shorter than sound waves. Light is supposed 
to be ether-wave motion also, but the waves are very 
much shorter than those of heat. If we heat iron it 
may be so hot that we can not touch it, but still re¬ 
main dark. Heat it more and more, and it will be¬ 
come red ; and if we continue to heat it in a hot tire, 
it will become still brighter until it gives out a white 
light. The light waves are not only very short but 
are supposed to travel so rapidly that millions rush 
into the eye every second. 

The theory is that violet light differs from red 
light in having more vibrations a second—nearly 
twice as many, in fact. Each color has its own num¬ 
ber of vibrations, and the different shades are mix¬ 
tures of two or more of these sets of vibrations. 
How wonderfully sensitive the eye must be to report 
these differences of wave motion so accurately to the 
brain! 

MAGNETISM. 

Two years ago we made some experiments with 
the magnet. We shall now see what else we can 
learn about it. 

Tom, wishing to show us some experiments, sus¬ 
pended a large darning-needle by a thread, as you see 


184 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


in the picture. It of course swung round and point¬ 
ed in no particular direction. 

He held the magnet near the needle, and both ends 



of the needle were attracted by the same end of the 
magnet. Then he laid the needle on the end of the 
magnet marked JV, and drew it first over this end 
point. He did this six or seven times, and suspended 
it as before. The needle now pointed north, and 
when he brought the iV^end of the magnet near it, 
the point of the needle was pushed away, or repelled, 
as we say, but the eye of the needle was attracted by 
that end of the magnet. Then he tried the other end 
of the magnet. It attracted the point, but repelled 
the eye of the needle. The magnet had evidently 
produced a change in the needle; it magnetized the 
needle. 

Meanwhile Amy had magnetized another needle 



MAGNETISM. 


185 


(it was an' ordinary sewing needle) by drawing it 
over the unmarked end of the magnet. She did not 
suspend hers, hut rubbed it between her fingers to 
make it oily and carefully laid it on the surface of 
a dish of water. It floated like a straw. This seems 
strange, for steel, of which the needle is made, is 
heavier than water, but a thin coat of air clings to 
the polished steel and the needle is not heavy enough 
to break through it to the water. If the needle is 
not dry it will not float. The needle soon turned so 
that the eye pointed to the north. 

Tom next tried to magnetize a piece of iron wire, 
but there was no lasting effect. As long as the wire 
was held against the magnet, it turned the needles 



Manner of suspending needle to be experimented with by a 
magnet. 

brought near it, showing that it was magnetized as 
long as it touched the magnet. The magnet seemed 
to produce no effect on copper and brass; steel only 
remained magnetized. 


186 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


The magnet has something in it that can do work; 
that is, it can move things or change them in some 
way. That which does work or produces an effect 
we call force. Force shows itself by means of many 
things. Force shown by muscle is muscular force; 
water flowing over a falls or a dam is water power; 
water changed to steam is steam power ; when force 
shows itself in the magnet it is magnetism. 



Mariner’s compass. 


When this force is transferred to a needle, the 
needle becomes a magnetic needle. Its two ends act* 
differently, as you have seen. One end is said to 
have positive magnetism, and the other negative. I 
can not see any reason for these names, as one kind 






















ELECTRICITY. 


J-87 

seems to be as positive as the other. The end of the 
needle which seeks the north is known as the north 
pole of the needle, and the other as the south pole. 

Scientists think the earth is an immense magnet 
because it seems to affect the needle just as our little 
magnet did. The north magnetic pole of the earth 
is located in the northern part of Hudson Bay. 
Wherever we may carry the magnetic needle on the 
earth, it points directly toward that place, unless dis¬ 
turbed by some magnetic minerals near by. You 
will see that the needle does not point exactly north 
in all places. 

When the needle is suspended on a metal pivot 
and a plate on which the directions are marked is 
fastened under the needle, the instrument is called a 
compass. It is used by mariners and surveyors. 


ELECTRICITY. 

“ I want to ask you a question,” said Tom one 
bright winter’s afternoon. “ I was combing my hair 
this morning with a hard rubber comb. I laid the 
comb on some bits of paper which had been left on 
the stand, and as I put the comb down the bits of 
paper seemed to fly up against it. Can you tell me 
what made them do that ? ” 

Yes; but before I answer your question, let us try 


18$ 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


several things. Here is a rubber comb and a piece 
of old silk. How I will put the comb on these bits 
of paper; they lie perfectly quiet, but let me rub the 
comb briskly with the piece of silk, and then bold it 
near the papers. 



u Ob, see them 
jump up ! ” cried 
Amy. 

“ They look as 
though they were 
alive,” added Wil¬ 
lie. 

I will now use 

Glass rod attracting bits of paper. a gl ass rod instead 

of the comb. 

u That does it too,” exclaimed all the children at 
once. 



Amy, y ou make two little balls about as large as 
a pea out of this cotton. Tom, you may get a silk 
thread about a foot long and fasten the balls that 
Amy makes, one at each end of the thread. I will 










ELECTRICITY. 


189 



Cotton balls attracted by rubber comb. 


put in Amy 


hang them over the pencil fastened in this big book. 
Now I’ll rub the comb with the silk and hold it near 
the cotton balls. Little sharp eyes, what do you see ? 

“ When the 
comb came near 
the balls they flew 
at it, and then 
they flew back. 

The balls tried to 
get as far away 
from the comb as 
they could.” 

“ Why do they do that ? 

We shall see. Now let me try the glass rod. 
See, the balls come toward it: but just as soon as 
they touch it, off they fly, and every time I bring 
the rod near to them they try to get away. But 
if I bring the comb near, they are drawn to it for 
an instant. 

“ I think the glass has something on it that draws 
the balls to it until they get full of the same thing,” 
Willie offered as an explanation, “ and when they are 
full they don’t want any more.” 

The balls are like a greedy boy who has eaten so 
much cake that he can not bear to think of any more. 
But how is it that when I rub the comb and bring it 
near the balls, it attracts them ? 



190 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


“ There must be a different kind on the comb,” 
said Willie. 

You are quite right. When the glass rod or rub¬ 
ber comb is rubbed something is developed that 
wasn’t there before. It is a force, because it can do 
something. As you saw, it attracted the cotton balls 
at first and then sent them away. This force is called 
electricity—a word which comes from electron. Elec¬ 
tron is a substance in which people of olden times 
first observed the effects of this force. 

The force produced on the rubber comb or ruler 
by rubbing it, acts differently from that produced on 
the glass rod. When the balls touch the glass rod 
they get full of the same kind of electricity, and there¬ 
fore are soon repelled. Then when the comb is 
brought near them they are attracted because it has 
opposite electricity. 

When things are charged with the same kind of 
electricity they repel each other, and when they are 
charged with opposite electricity they attract each 
other, just as you saw in magnetism. When an ob¬ 
ject is full of electricity, w r e say it is charged with 
electricity. 


FRICTIONAL ELECTRICITY. 


191 


FRICTIONAL ELECTRICITY. 

The electricity produced by rubbing is called 
frictional electricity. I have often heard this elec¬ 
tricity snap in my hair, when I passed the comb 
through it on a dry cold day. 

“ I’ve seen sparks in the dark when I rubbed my 
kitty’s fur,” said Amy. 

“And I’ve seen them on my horse when 1 cur¬ 
ried him,” said Willie. 

When I rub the glass rod with the silk, the 
friction produces one kind of electricity on the rod, 
and the other kind on the silk, as you will see if I 
hold the cloth near the balls. Now if I rub the comb 
with the same silk, the same kind of electricity that 
was on the silk before will now be on the comb, and 
the kind that was on the glass before will now be on 
the piece of silk. 

Watch me rub this stick of sealing wax and try it 
near the balls. What do you think of the kind of 
electricity the wax has ? 

“ It has the same kind as the comb,” Tom quick¬ 
ly replied. 

Now by rubbing other objects with silk, we shall 
find that on some of them the same kind is produced 
as on the glass, and on the rest the same kind as on 


192 


HAROLD'S QUESTS. 


the sealing wax. You can try many such experi¬ 
ments by yourselves. 

We call the electricity produced on the glass by 
rubbing it with silk, vitreous electricity, and that pro¬ 
duced on the sealing wax, resinous. Vitreous means 
of glass, and resinous means of resin or wax. More 
often we call the vitreous positive , and the resinous 
negative electricity, and write them as + and — elec¬ 
tricity. 

Now, Tom, you can answer your own question 
about the comb and the bits of paper. 

We also rubbed the glass with linen cloth ; but 
little effect was noticeable, and, what there was, soon 
disappeared. There was even less effect noticeable 
when the glass was rubbed with the hand. 

When the glass was moistened or the silk damp, 
no effect was seen. Why was this ? 

I think there was just as much force produced on 
the rod with the linen or the hand as there was with 
the dry silk, but the force flowed off the linen rapidly. 
Over glass or rubber it seems to pass slowly, so that 
it can collect in sufficient quantity to produce notice¬ 
able effects. When the cotton balls were suspended 
by linen instead of by silk thread, they were charged 
just as those on the silk thread were, but they soon 
came together, showing that the force had passed from 
them over the linen. 


FRICTIONAL ELECTRICITY. 


193 


Objects which do not hold electricity are called 
conductors , and those over which it passes very slow¬ 
ly are non-conductors. Linen, water, and the hand, 
are good conductors of electricity ; glass, rubber, and 
dry wood are poor conductors. 

Frictional electricity is produced by machines in 
considerable quantity. A person may hold his hand 
on one of these machines and let the electricity pass 
through his body without any etfect; but if he stands 
on a stool having glass feet, when the air is dry, his 
hair will stand out straight from his head. The glass 
feet of the stool prevent the force from passing to 
the ground. 

“ There is a friction machine at our high school,” 
said Willie. “ I held my knuckle near the knob, and 
when a spark over an inch long passed from the knob 
to my hand I heard a snapping noise and felt a sharp 
sting. The spark looked like lightning. Is it the 
same ? ” 

Dr. Benjamin Franklin made some interesting 

experiments. He made a kite by fastening a silk 

handkerchief to a light cross constructed of two cedar 

sticks. At the upper point he attached a pointed 

wire about a foot in length. A key and a piece of 

silk ribbon were tied to the lower end of the twine. 

Then he waited for a thunderstorm. When it came 

he and his son let out their kite. Mr. Franklin stood 
14 


194 


HAROLD'S QUESTS. 



Dr. Benjamin Franklin’s experiment with a kite. 


inside of the door to keep the ribbon from getting 
wet. He took care that the twine did not touch any 
object. As the cloud stood overhead he saw by the 






FRICTIONAL ELECTRICITY. 


195 


fuzz on the twine that there was some force on it. 
He held his knuckle near the key and received a 
shock. He performed many other experiments with 
his kite, proving that lightning and frictional elec¬ 
tricity are one and the same thing. He also found 
that sometimes the cloud was positively and at other 
times negatively electrified. 

About the same time several men in France were 
experimenting along the same line, but instead of a 
kite they used an iron rod erected on the house. One 
day during a heavy thunderstorm they were watch¬ 
ing their apparatus. Mr. Richman—that was the 
name of one of the men—had his head about a foot 
from the rod when his companion saw a ball of fire 
pass from the rod to Mr. Richman’s head with a loud, 
crackling report. The stroke killed him instantly. 

Mr. Franklin’s metal point on the kite drew off 
the electricity slowly, and this led him to invent 
lightning rods. 

“ I have more than once noticed that it rained 
much harder after a loud clap of thunder,” observed 
Willie. “ Does the thunder have anything to do 
with it ? ” 

I think not. The thunder does not produce the 
rain. It is rather a result of the rain. Dry air is a poor 
conductor. A cloud may be charged with one kind 
of electricity and the earth just below with another 


196 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


kind; but the dry air keeps them from coming to¬ 
gether, or discharging, as we say. The rain begins to 
fall and makes a path part of the way; the discharge 
follows and leaps over the remaining dry air so quickly 
that the flash is seen before the rain reaches the earth. 

GALVANIC ELECTRICITY. 

We are indebted to a dead frog for the discov¬ 
ery of another kind of electricity, and a most use- 



Experiment with a frog’s hind legs. Two wires of different 
metals touch each other at one end, while their other ends 
touch respectively the loins, and the nerves of the leg. 

ful kind. His hind legs had been dressed to make 
part of a tempting meal, and hung on a copper 







GALVANIC ELECTRICITY. 


197 


hook. It happened that the hook was on an iron 
balcony so that the legs of the frog touched the 
iron. Professor Galvani’s wife, so the story goes^ 
noticed a jerking in 
the frog’s legs and 
called her husband’s 
attention to it. 

This led him to 
make other experi¬ 
ments, and he suc¬ 
ceeded in discover¬ 
ing what has been 

called the galvanic The simplest form of galvanic battery, 
current. Years la¬ 
ter Professor Yolta, also of the country of Columbus, 
made improvements in apparatus to produce it, and 
so it is sometimes known as voltaic electricity. 

Then Tom, to whom I had suggested a little ex¬ 
periment, showed us what he had discovered. He 
said : 



“ This tumbler contains water into which I have 
put a spoonful of sulphuric acid. I have here two 
strips of metal; one is copper, the other zinc. I fas¬ 
tened a piece of copper wire to the top of each and 
placed them in the acid water, so that they did not 
touch each other. Yow, when I join the wires and 
hold them near a magnetic needle, it makes the 






198 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


needle turn so that it stands almost across the wire. 
When the copper plate is nearer the needle it turns 
one way, and when the zinc plate is nearer it turns 
the other way. I put the strips into water without 
the acid and held the wire near the needle, but there 
was no effect; so I think there was something in 
the wire that came from the metals when the acid 
water touched them.” 

Your tumbler, Tom, is the simplest form of the 
galvanic battery. Some day you may place a penny 
on top of your tongue and a dime or nickel under it. 
Perhaps you can discover something. 



METAL PLATE METAL PLATE 


The circuit of the telegraphic current. 

“ I think I can explain how the electricity was 
produced in the frog’s legs,” interrupted Willie. 
“ The juices in the flesh of the frog took the place of 
the acid water, the copper hook and iron balcony the 












GALVANIC ELECTRICITY. 


199 


place of the metals, and the nerves the place of the 
wires.” 

Then Willie took Tom’s battery and wound the 
wire through which a current was flowing around a 



piece of soft iron, and the iron was at once made a 
magnet. It drew the iron filings as the bar magnet 
did. As soon as he separated the wires, the iron 
filings fell off. The iron had lost its magnetism. 

He tried steel instead of iron ; it was magnetized 
like the iron, but when the current was broken, it did 
not lose its magnetism as the iron had done. 

Galvanic electricity is used for telegraphy {tele, 
far, and graphy , writing). The cells used hold about 



























200 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


a gallon ; a copper plate is put in the bottom and 
the zinc is suspended above it in the liquid, which 
is water having in it blue crystals of copper sul¬ 
phate. Many such cells are connected and form 
one large battery in the large offices. The wires 
and the earth make the circuit through which the 
current flows. When the operator puts down his 
key the circuit of the current is complete, and the 
keys in all the offices in the circuit are drawn down 
with a click. 

If you look at this telegraph instrument you will 
see two spools of wire carefully wound with silk. In 
the center of the coils is a core of soft iron. When 
the current passes through the wire, the core is mag- 



Self-recording telegraphic instrument. 

netized and draws the bar or armature above down 
on itself and the click is heard. As soon as the 


















GALVANIC ELECTRICITY. 


201 


operator lifts the key the circuit is broken, the core 
loses its force and the bar is raised by a spring. 




The telephone—entire and sectional views. D D is a steel mag¬ 
net ; C , a coil of copper wire wrapped with silk, its ends 
connected with binding screws, E E ; B B is a thin disk 
of soft iron tightly clamped around its edge to the two 
parts of the wooden case HH , which are held together by 
screws, while the central part of the disk is left free and 
nearly touches the magnet D D ; A A is the mouthpiece 
through which the speaker directs his voice upon the iron 
disk, making it vibrate against the magnet. 

The telephone (tele, far, and phone, sounder) 
works on the same principle. In telegraphing the 
operator presses down the key and thus closes the cir¬ 
cuit ; but in the telephone there is a very thin plate 
that takes the place of the armature, and this is pressed 






















































202 


HAROLD’S QUESTS. 


against the core by the sound vibrations. Every 
vibration completes the circuit, and the current mag¬ 
netizing the core at the other end of the line makes 
its plate vibrate just as the plate at the speaker’s end 
does, and thus reproduces the same sounds with all 
their qualities. These and a number of other inven¬ 
tions depend on the fact that soft iron is instantly 
magnetized by a current and as quickly demagne¬ 
tized when the current is broken. It is a simple 
thing, and it is a wonder to me that it was not dis¬ 
covered and applied long before it was. 


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n~HE STORY OF THE COTTON PLANT. By F. 
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J~HE STOR Y OF THE MIND. By Prof. J. Mark Baldwin. 
<J~HE STORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY. By Alfred T. Story. 


<J~HE 
1 J. 


STORY OF LIFE IN THE SEAS. By Sidney 
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<J~HE STORY OF GERM LIFE. By Prof. H. W. Conn. 

n~HE STORY OF THE EARTH'S ATMOSPHERE. By 
Douglas Archibald. 

n~HE STORY OF EXTINCT CIVILIZATIONS OF THE 
^ EAST. By Robert Anderson, M. A., F. A. S. 

c J r ~HE- STORY OF ELECTRICITY. By John Munro, C. E. 

C T~HE STORY OF A PIECE OF COAL. By E. A. Martin, 
1 F. G. S. 

7 ~HE STORY OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM. By C. F. 




Chambers, F. R. A. S. 


<J~HE STORY OF THE EARTH. By H. G. Seeley, F. R. S. 

<Y h E STORY OF THE PLANTS. By Grant Allen. 

H~HE STORY OF “ PRIMITIVE" MAN. By Edward 
■*- Clodd. 

C J~HE STORY OF THE STARS. By G. F. Chambers, 


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ness of descrintion ernS 3t New .Plymouth is told with fine skill and vivid- 

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Pauline King. Illustrated. r2mo. Cloth, specially bound, 
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The story is fresh and modern, relieved by incidents and constant humor, and the 
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author of “ The Captain-General, ” etc. With 8 full-page Illus¬ 
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True to his Home. 

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(SUCCESS AGAINST ODDS; or , How an Ameri- 

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In this spirited and interesting story Mr. Stoddard tells the adventures of a plucky 
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OYS IN THE MOUNTAINS AND ON THE 

PLAINS; or, The Western Adventures of Tom Smart , Bob 
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Illustrations. Square 8vo. Cloth, gilt side and back, $2.50. 

“A handsome gift-book relating to travel, adventure, and field sports in the West. 5 ’ 

New York Times. 

“ Mr. Rideing’s book is intended for the edification of advanced young readers. It 
narrates the adventures of Tom Smart, Bob Edge, and Peter Small, in their travels 
through the mountainous region of the West, principally in Colorado. The author was 
a member of the Wheeler expedition, engaged in surveying the Territories, and his 
descriptions of scenery, mining life, the Indians, games, etc., are in a great measure 
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W. H. Rideing. Uniform with “Boys in the Mountains.” 
With numerous Illustrations. Illuminated boards, $1.75. 

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the author takes them among scenes of the greatest interest to all boys, whether resi¬ 
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coast wreckers and divers, and finally on a tour of inspection of lighthouses and light¬ 
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“This is the boys’ favorite author, and of the many books Mr. Fenn has written 
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light in —Christian at Work. 

“ English pluck and Swiss coolness are tested to the utmost in these perilous ex¬ 
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is the account of the first breathless ascent of a real mountain-peak. It matters little to 
the reader whether the search for crystals is rewarded or not, so concerned does he be 
come for the fate of the hunters.”— Literary World. 

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breeziness and fun. It begins well and goes on better, and from the time Syd joins 
his ship, exciting incidents follow each other in such rapid and brilliant succession that 
nothing short of absolute compulsion would induce the reader to lay it down.”— London 
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